3 min read
Cloud-giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) is experiencing a significant outage that’s affecting numerous popular services and websites. The disruption is linked to increased error rates and latency in the US-EAST-1 region, one of AWS’s busiest.
Widespread Internet Impact
AWS powers a large portion of the internet’s infrastructure. While the outage doesn’t mean the entire web is down, many major applications and websites are affected. Impacted services include Snapchat, Fortnite, Alexa, Canva, Duolingo, Venmo, Asana, Coinbase, and many others.
The issue began around 12:11 PM PKT when AWS first reported problems in the US-EAST-1 region. By 1:02 PM PKT, Downdetector had logged over 5,769 peak reports, suggesting a rapidly growing outage.
AWS Dashboard Also Goes Down
Normally, users can check the AWS Health Dashboard to monitor such incidents. However, during this outage, the dashboard itself became inaccessible, displaying a “This site can’t be reached” error. This made it harder for users and businesses to get real-time updates.
At 12:51 PM PKT, AWS stated:
“We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause. We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
As of now, Amazon has not posted any official updates on its social media accounts regarding the situation.
Service Status Updates
Multiple platforms have issued their own status reports. Asana confirmed a full service outage, with updates citing AWS errors in Virginia.
Perplexity, an AI search tool, displayed this message on its status page:
“We are experiencing an outage related to an AWS operational issue. We are continuing to work on a fix for this incident.”
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas also posted on X:
Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.
— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) October 20, 2025
Global Impact
Users across social media are reporting failed logins, app crashes, and inaccessible websites. The outage is affecting both consumer platforms and business tools, causing widespread inconvenience.
The incident highlights the critical dependence on AWS’s US-EAST-1 region. Historically, this region has been at the center of major outages in 2020, 2021, and 2023. When such a hub goes down, ripple effects spread globally.
What to Do If You’re Affected
- Check the official status pages of the apps you use.
- If your business relies on AWS, review your region and failover strategy.
- Communicate with your users to maintain transparency.
- Once services are restored, assess whether multi-region or multi-cloud solutions could reduce future risks.
This story is still developing. More details are expected once AWS releases its root cause analysis and restoration timeline.
