Amazon down reports are flooding in worldwide as users struggle to log in to their accounts and access services. In the early hours of October 20, 2025, customers were suddenly logged out of Amazon and shown the error: “There was a problem. There was an issue on our end. Please try again.”
The outage is directly tied to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud infrastructure that powers Amazon itself and thousands of other companies. Because AWS is one of the most critical internet backbones, failures in its systems immediately ripple across industries, disrupting everything from financial trading to gaming, streaming, and home security.
Operational Update from AWS
According to the official AWS Service Health Dashboard, the issue began with increased error rates and latencies in the US-EAST-1 Region (Northern Virginia):
- Oct 20 12:11 AM PDT – AWS reported investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple services in the region.
- Oct 20 12:51 AM PDT – AWS confirmed increased error rates and latencies across multiple services, including impacts on case creation through the AWS Support Center and API. Engineers are actively working to mitigate the issue and determine the root cause.
Affected AWS services include:
- Disrupted: Amazon DynamoDB
- Impacted: AWS Config, AWS Database Migration Service, AWS Elemental, AWS Global Accelerator, AWS IAM Identity Center, AWS Identity and Access Management, AWS Private Certificate Authority, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Security Token Service, AWS Support API, AWS Support Center, AWS Systems Manager, AWS VPCE PrivateLink, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Amazon Interactive Video Service, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon VPC Lattice
Services Impacted by the Amazon Down Outage
Amazon-owned platforms Alexa and Ring went offline first, leaving smart devices unresponsive and security cameras inaccessible. But the failure extended far beyond Amazon, with major services worldwide confirming outages:
- Robinhood – Trading halted for users unable to log in.
- Coinbase – Crypto traders blocked from wallets and trades.
- Venmo – Peer-to-peer payments delayed or failing.
- Roblox – Players disconnected mid-session.
- Fortnite – Login failures and server crashes.
- Snapchat – Messaging and story uploads blocked.
- Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Canva, Duolingo – Streaming and creative platforms offline.
- Goodreads, Life360, Chime, Whatnot, Perplexity AI – Access issues across multiple apps.
- McDonald’s app, CollegeBoard, Wordle, PUBG Battlegrounds – Additional services reporting downtime.
Even Verizon customers reported problems, suggesting connectivity providers were indirectly affected. The reach of the Amazon down outage makes clear just how many industries depend on AWS to stay online.
What We Know
Evidence confirms the disruption began in the AWS US-EAST-1 region, historically one of Amazon’s most critical and failure-prone hubs. This region handles authentication and workloads for countless platforms. Previous outages in this same region, such as the 2017 S3 crash and multiple failures in 2021 and 2024, also caused widespread internet chaos.
Today’s failures appear linked to identity and login systems, with many apps loading partially but preventing access to accounts. This is consistent with outages involving AWS IAM, Cognito, or S3.
What We Don’t Know
Amazon has not yet published a root cause. It is unclear whether the outage stems from hardware breakdown, network routing issues, a misconfiguration, or another type of infrastructure error. Speculation about possible cyberattacks has circulated online, but no evidence has been confirmed.
The duration remains uncertain. Some services may restore quickly, while others may experience degraded performance or lagged recovery for hours or days. AWS usually provides a Post-Event Summary after stability is achieved, which could take several days.
Why the Amazon Down Outage Matters
The term “Amazon down” has grown to mean more than just Amazon.com being unavailable. AWS underpins financial platforms, messaging apps, entertainment services, and smart home devices. When AWS fails, the effects ripple across markets and daily life simultaneously.
For financial apps like Robinhood and Coinbase, the timing could not have been worse. Traders were locked out during volatile market activity, sparking fear of missed opportunities and asset risks. Venmo downtime left payments stuck mid-transfer. Alexa and Ring failures disrupted home automation and security. Gamers and streamers on Roblox, Fortnite, Snapchat, and Crunchyroll faced sudden shutdowns. Across all industries, frustration and concern grew quickly as the scale of the incident became clear.
What Users Should Do
For individual users, the best advice is to wait for AWS to restore service. Resetting devices or deleting apps will not resolve the problem because the fault lies with cloud infrastructure. Users should monitor official status pages for AWS, Amazon, and impacted platforms for updates.
For businesses, this is another reminder of the risks of relying on a single cloud provider. While multi-cloud strategies are costly, they provide resilience against outages of this scale. Clear communication with customers is also crucial during downtime.
What Happens Next
Amazon engineers are working to mitigate the issue and restore impacted services. Once the problem is resolved, AWS will likely release a detailed incident report. Previous reports from AWS suggest that a post-mortem could take days or weeks.
Until then, the Amazon down outage stands as a stark reminder of how fragile centralized internet infrastructure can be. With so much of the web tethered to AWS, one point of failure can affect shopping, banking, payments, entertainment, communication, and home security all at once.
