Amazon’s cloud service outage disrupts websites and apps around the world. Credit: Shutterstock
A massive global outage has crippled much of the internet after a technical glitch in Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud platform, disrupted access to dozens of major websites, apps and video games in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
The AWS crash that began in the early morning hours of Monday, October 20th quickly escalated into a global issue, leaving users unable to access everything from Amazon.com and Prime Video to Snapchat, Zoom, and Fortnite. The company confirmed that several systems in the US-EAST-1 region were experiencing “increased error rates and delays,” resulting in widespread outages.
Amazon acknowledged in a status update that it is “actively working to mitigate the issue and understand the root cause.” The company added that customers may experience issues creating or updating support cases while engineers work to stabilize affected servers.
The social media platform was flooded with complaints as millions of users reported errors, frozen screens, or complete service failure. On X (formerly Twitter), “AWS down” quickly became a trending topic around the world, reflecting the scale of the disruption caused by what experts are calling one of the biggest cloud service failures of the year.
Major platforms and apps offline
The outage affected a wide range of online services that rely on AWS for their cloud infrastructure. In the US, users lost access to Amazon, Alexa, Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Canva, Duolingo, and Perplexity AI, and social networks such as Snapchat and Goodreads were also affected.
Popular online games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Clash Royale have been hit with severe connectivity issues, frustrating players around the world. In Europe, some Amazon services remained operational although Alexa continued to struggle, but users across the continent still experienced similar failures when trying to access apps and streaming platforms linked to AWS.
According to the trouble tracking site Down Detector, reports of service failures increased rapidly from early morning. With more than 14,000 incidents recorded in the US and 4,000 in the UK, the list of affected services is like a who’s who of the digital world.
- Amazon Web Services
- snapchat
- zoom
- ring
- lloyds bank
- halifax
- Kamba
- HMRC
- my fitness pal
- slack
- Duolingo
- fortnite
- alexa
- IMDb
- Amazon Prime Video
The outage also disrupted financial services, cloud storage, and business tools, with companies reporting difficulty processing transactions and accessing key data.
A reminder of how vulnerable the internet is
This global incident is a stark reminder of how much modern life relies on a few large cloud providers, particularly Amazon’s AWS platform, for everything from entertainment and e-commerce to government databases and banking apps.
“When AWS stalls, the impact is immediate and far-reaching,” said one cybersecurity analyst. “We have built our digital world on shared infrastructure, and today shows us just how fragile that system is.”
AWS has faced outages before, but Monday’s outage was one of the most severe in recent memory. Experts say such incidents could increasingly have real-world consequences, from missed business meetings and stopped payments to inability to access home security systems and entertainment platforms, as cloud computing becomes central to daily life.
Amazon engineers are still working to restore normal operations, and updates are expected throughout the day. For now, millions of people around the world remain digitally stranded, waiting for the “invisible engine” of the modern internet to roar back to life.
