Amazon’s cloud services division AWS said it continues to work to stabilize operations after a major outage that caused widespread connectivity issues for businesses and popular websites and apps around the world.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) said in an update to its status page on Monday that it continues to “monitor the recovery of all AWS services,” but that some customers may continue to experience issues after the massive global internet disruption that hit major companies such as Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, Canva, and Wordle.
Outage tracker Downdetector’s website showed that many apps and websites, including Reddit and Xfinity, had stabilized, but said it had received more than 11 million reports of connectivity issues around the world since the outage began, and hundreds of businesses were affected.
Some websites and apps, including Amazon’s services, initially appeared to have recovered earlier in the day, but new issues emerged.
AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage, and other digital services to businesses, governments, and individuals. A server failure can result in failures of entire websites and platforms that rely on cloud infrastructure.
Amazon said the issue appears to have originated from within the EC2 internal network. This outage does not appear to have been caused by a cyberattack.
Mehdi Dowdy, CEO of internet performance monitoring company Catchpoint, told CNN that the economic cost of the outage has not yet been assessed, but is likely to be very high.
“This incident highlights the complexity and vulnerability of the Internet and how every aspect of our work relies on it to function,” Dowdy said.
“The economic impact of this outage could easily reach hundreds of billions of dollars as millions of workers are out of work due to reduced productivity, and business operations from airlines to factories are halted or delayed.”
Platforms including AI startup Perplexity, trading app Robinhood, messaging app Signal, and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also reported issues they blamed on the AWS outage.
The puzzlement is now resolved. The root cause is an AWS issue. We are currently working on a solution.
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) October 20, 2025
AWS is one of the giant cloud computing service providers, competing with Google and Microsoft’s cloud services by providing on-demand computing power, data storage, and other digital services to businesses and institutions.
Server issues can wreak havoc on the web, and so many companies rely on that infrastructure to function.
Some analysts are using the outage to draw attention to the highly consolidated global cloud services market, with AWS accounting for 30% and other tech giants such as Microsoft and Google accounting for 20% and 13%, respectively.
“These disruptions are not just technical problems, they are democratic failures. When a single provider goes out of business, critical services go offline with it. News organizations become inaccessible, secure communications apps like Signal cease to function, and the infrastructure that serves the digital world collapses,” Colin Cass Speth, head of digital affairs at freedom of expression group Article 19, said in a statement.
“We urgently need to diversify cloud computing. The infrastructure that supports democratic speech, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot depend on a handful of companies.”
PSA: We are aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Wait.
— Meredith Whitaker (@mer__edith) October 20, 2025
Downdetector, a site where web users report outages, conducted a roll call of hundreds of popular sites that users experienced difficulty accessing during the outage.
The list includes Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, Canva, Wordle, and more.
Amazon’s shopping sites Prime Video and Alexa are also facing problems, the site said.
Reuters reported that Uber rival Lyft’s app is also down for thousands of users in the United States, and many bank customers in the United Kingdom are also reporting outages.
You may have seen reports today that issues with Amazon Web Services are affecting many websites and apps across the UK. We currently know that some services are affected by this. I’m sorry. Please wait for a while while we investigate.
— Bank of Scotland (@BankofScotland) October 20, 2025
