On Monday, October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant outage that disrupted numerous online services globally. The incident, which began around 3:11 a.m. Eastern Time, primarily affected the US-EAST-1 region, leading to widespread issues across various platforms. AWS reported increased error rates and latencies for multiple services, including its own offerings such as Alexa and Prime Video.
The outage had a far-reaching impact, affecting services in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other regions. In the UK, major institutions including Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Vodafone, BT, and the government’s HMRC website experienced disruptions
Affected Services
The outage impacted a wide range of platforms:
Social Media & Communication: Snapchat, Signal, and Perplexity experienced disruptions.
Gaming: Fortnite, Roblox, and Clash Royale were among the affected games.
Financial Services: Platforms like ADP, Coinbase, Robinhood, Venmo, and Chime reported issues.
Retail & Food Services: The McDonald’s app and Amazon’s own services, including Ring and Kindle, were also disrupted.
AI & Tech Services: AI startup Perplexity acknowledged AWS as the root cause of its downtime.
Amazon attributed the outage to issues with its domain name system (DNS), which translates web addresses into IP addresses. The company reported that by approximately 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time, most services had recovered, though some localized impairments persisted.
Industry Response
In an update on its status page, AWS confirmed that the underlying DNS issue had been fully mitigated and that most AWS service operations were now functioning normally. However, they noted that some requests might still be throttled as they work toward full resolution. They recommended users experiencing ongoing issues to flush their DNS caches.
As of now, AWS continues to monitor the situation and is working to ensure the stability of its services. Users are advised to check the AWS Health Dashboard for the latest updates.