What's happened
On Monday, 20 October 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant outage in its US-EAST-1 region, causing widespread disruptions to numerous popular websites and apps including Perplexity AI, Robinhood, Snapchat, Fortnite, and Amazon's own services. AWS engineers are actively working to resolve the issue and restore normal operations.
What's behind the headline?
AWS Outage Reveals Internet's Cloud Dependency
The outage in AWS's US-EAST-1 region underscores the internet's heavy reliance on a few dominant cloud providers. When AWS experiences issues, the ripple effect impacts a vast array of services—from gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox to financial apps such as Robinhood and Coinbase, and even Amazon's own retail and streaming services.
Centralization Risks
This event highlights the risks of centralizing critical infrastructure within a single geographic region. Despite AWS's global footprint, the US-EAST-1 region remains a pivotal hub, making it a single point of failure for many services.
Impact on Users and Businesses
Millions of users worldwide faced service interruptions, affecting daily activities such as communication, entertainment, and financial transactions. Businesses dependent on AWS infrastructure experienced operational disruptions, potentially leading to financial losses and reputational damage.
Response and Recovery
AWS's prompt acknowledgment and ongoing mitigation efforts demonstrate the company's commitment to transparency and resolution. However, the incident will likely prompt companies to reassess their cloud strategies, emphasizing multi-region deployments and diversification across cloud providers.
Future Outlook
This outage will accelerate discussions on cloud resilience and the need for robust disaster recovery plans. Users and businesses should anticipate increased investments in infrastructure redundancy and cross-cloud compatibility to mitigate similar risks in the future.
What the papers say
The South China Morning Post reported AWS's confirmation of "increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region," highlighting affected platforms like Perplexity AI and Coinbase. Al Jazeera detailed AWS's status updates, noting the identification of a "potential root cause" and efforts to "accelerate recovery," while listing impacted services including Zoom and Duolingo. The Scotsman emphasized the global scale of the outage, mentioning that despite the issue originating in northern Virginia, users worldwide were affected, with Amazon noting "significant signs of recovery" by mid-morning. Gulf News focused on the UAE impact, reporting hundreds of users facing difficulties and underscoring AWS's role in powering a vast portion of online platforms. The NY Post provided early outage data from Downdetector, citing thousands of reports from users of Roblox, Snapchat, and Amazon.com, and quoted Amazon's statement on engineers actively working to mitigate the issue. Business Insider UK highlighted the breadth of affected AWS tools and confirmed Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas's statement that the root cause was an AWS issue. These sources collectively paint a comprehensive picture of a major cloud infrastructure failure with widespread consequences, while also documenting AWS's ongoing response efforts.
How we got here
Amazon Web Services is a leading cloud computing provider offering on-demand computing power and data storage to many global companies and institutions. Its US-EAST-1 region, located in northern Virginia, hosts critical backend infrastructure for numerous popular digital platforms. Disruptions in this region can cause cascading outages across the internet.
Go deeper
- What caused the AWS outage in the US-EAST-1 region?
- Which major apps and services were affected by the AWS disruption?
- How is AWS responding to restore services and prevent future outages?
Common question
-
What caused the AWS outage and how is it affecting users?
On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage in its US-EAST-1 region, disrupting countless online services and platforms worldwide. This incident has raised questions about what triggered the outage, which services are impacted, and how long it might take to recover. In this page, we explore the causes behind the AWS disruption, its effects on users, and what it means for the future of cloud computing.
More on these topics
-
Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
-
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system that allows users to program games and play games created by other users.
-
Snapchat is an American multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their
-
Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative shooter-survival ga
-
Canva Pty Ltd. is an Australian multinational proprietary software company launched in 2013 that provides a graphic design platform to create visual content for presentations, websites, and similar products. Its uses include templates for presentations...
-
Duolingo, Inc. is an American educational technology company that produces learning apps and provides language certification. Duolingo offers courses on 42 languages, ranging from English, French, and Spanish to less commonly studied languages such as...
-
Amazon.com, Inc., is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington. Amazon focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.
-
Prime Video, also marketed as Amazon Prime Video, is an American Internet video on demand service that is developed, owned, and operated by Amazon.
-
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. is an American communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It provides videotelephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferenci
-
Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging service developed by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger. It uses the Internet to send one-to-one and group messages, which can include files, voice notes, images and videos.
-
Coinbase is a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California. They broker exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Tezos, and many others, with fiat currencies in approximately 32 countries, and bitco
-
Lyft, Inc. develops, markets, and operates a mobile app, offering vehicles for hire, motorized scooters, a bicycle-sharing system, and food delivery.