Global AWS Outage Disrupts Major Websites and Apps Worldwide
October 20, 2025
A major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) early Monday, October 20, 2025, caused widespread disruption across the internet, affecting major apps, websites, and smart-home systems globally. The issue began in AWS’s US-EAST-1 (Virginia) region and stemmed from a DNS routing problem that crippled key services including DynamoDB.
By mid-morning, AWS said the “underlying DNS issue” had been fully mitigated, though users continued to experience slow performance and login failures as systems recovered.
The outage temporarily took down or disrupted platforms such as Snapchat, Signal, Fortnite, Roblox, Ring, Alexa, Robinhood, Venmo, and even some banking and retail sites. Amazon’s own shopping and streaming services also saw interruptions. Downdetector logged millions of user reports across North America, Europe, and Australia.
AWS confirmed that most systems are now operational, but some regions are still processing backlogs. The company will release a full post-incident analysis once the investigation concludes.
Today’s incident highlights the internet’s heavy reliance on a few major cloud providers — and the need for stronger redundancy and disaster-recovery plans across industries.
