Major AWS outage disrupts dozens of popular websites and services

October 20, 2025 (MLN): Amazon Web Services (AWS), the dominant force in cloud infrastructure, suffered a significant outage earlier today, disrupting access to many major websites and apps worldwide.

The company attributed the issue to an “operational problem” impacting “multiple services” and said it was “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” according to an update posted at 2:01 a.m. PDT. Nearly 70 AWS services were affected at the height of the outage, CNBC reported.

Shortly afterward, AWS reported “significant signs of recovery,” noting that “most requests should now be succeeding” though it was still processing a backlog of pending requests. By 3:03 a.m. PDT, AWS confirmed that global services tied to its US-EAST-1 region were coming back online and that teams were continuing efforts toward full restoration.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, user reports showed widespread problems at several major platforms, including Amazon, Disney+, Lyft, McDonald’s, The New York Times, Reddit, Ring, Robinhood, Snapchat, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Venmo, and Verizon.

Travelers on United and Delta Airlines took to social media to report issues accessing reservations, checking in, and dropping off bags.

Gamers also experienced disruptions in popular online titles such as Roblox and Fortnite, while crypto exchange Coinbase said many users were unable to access their accounts.

Design platform Canva acknowledged that it was “experiencing significantly increased error rates” linked to problems with its cloud provider, AWS. Similarly, AI-powered search engine Perplexity was hit by the outage, with CEO Aravind Srinivas confirming on X that the root cause stemmed from AWS.

This latest incident depicts the fragility of modern digital infrastructure. It follows a major disruption in July 2024, when a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered widespread outages of Microsoft Windows systems, grounding flights, and halting operations at hospitals and banks worldwide.

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