AWS is currently down, and it took half the internet with it

This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing platform, is currently down. And while the previous sentence might make it sound like it’s just Amazon services experiencing issues, the outage is taking down a huge chunk of the internet. AWS is the backbone for many apps and websites. While it doesn't control the internet, it hosts and powers countless apps people use daily. This includes Asana, Snapchat, Roblox, Perplexity, Canva, Duolingo, Coinbase, Fortnite, McDonalds, Venmo, Apple TV, and many more.

Snapchat, Fortnite, and more are down as AWS outage hits

At the time of writing, at 4:02 AM ET, AWS's page on Downdetector logged around 5,769 peaks. The number is likely low since it’s barely 4 AM ET, and many affected users are probably still asleep. Typically, when a service goes down, the best course of action is to check its status page to figure out what exactly is going on. In this case, AWS's Health Dashboard is currently throwing a "This site can’t be reached" error.

There's also no word from Amazon yet on any of its socials. I was working on an article about Perplexity when the outage first started, and when I went to take a screenshot of a Perplexity page by asking the AI tool a query, it threw an error at me. After trying a couple of times and checking my internet connection, I decided to check Perplexity's Status page, and it said: “We are experiencing an outage related to an AWS operational issue. We are continuing to work on a fix for this incident.” https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

Perplexity's CEO, Aravind Srinivas, has also posted on X saying, "Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it." I then went to Asana to leave a comment to let my editor know and noticed Asana's down too. Naturally, I checked Asana's Status page, and sure enough, it confirmed full downtime. At the time of writing, Asana's status page states:

Update - We are continuing to investigate this issue.

Oct 20, 2025 - 07:59 UTC

Update - We are continuing to investigate this issue from our side, and waiting for an update from AWS.

Oct 20, 2025 - 07:43 UTC

Update - We are still seeing full downtime, and are continuing investigation.

Oct 20, 2025 - 07:30 UTC

Update - AWS is investigating errors in Virginia, per AWS Health Status

. We are continuing to investigate and will provide an update in 15 minutes.

Oct 20, 2025 - 07:15 UTC

Investigating - We are currently investigating an issue which affects all services.

Oct 20, 2025 - 07:10 UTC

Users on social media are reporting issues across the board, from failed logins to inaccessible apps and websites