Amazon, Zoom, Ring, and dozens more sites offline as AWS outage knocks out vast chunks of the internet

Aaron Brown

By Aaron Brown, 


Published: 20/10/2025

- 09:23

Updated: 20/10/2025

- 11:31
desktop-comment

Don't worry, there's probably nothing wrong with your broadband connection, this is something much bigger

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) has confirmed "increased error rates"
  • It's working to "understand root cause" and fix the outage
  • US-EAST-1, housed in Northern Virginia, was impacted by the error
  • Amazon says it has "identified a potential root cause" for the outage
  • Your favourite sites, social media apps, and games should be back online
  • AWS is sometimes nicknamed the 'backbone of the modern internet'
  • Many of the most popular social media services and websites rely on it
  • The confirmed issues at AWS triggered a wave of outages across the web
  • Snapchat, Amazon.co.uk, Ring, and Fortnite are all showing errors
  • Thousands of people across the UK unable to connect to the service

Struggling to access your favourite website? You're not alone.

Vast swathes of the internet are offline this morning, with popular websites like Amazon.co.uk, meeting service Zoom, home security company Ring, and video game Fortnite down for thousands of people across the UK, mainland Europe, and the United States of America. Trying to access any of these sites or services from your laptop, tablet, or smartphone will leave you with an error message or a never-ending loading animation.

Worse still, critical services like HMRC, Gov.uk, and major financial institutions like Halifax, Lloyds Bank, and Bank of Scotland were also impacted by the AWS outage — leaving users unable to load them correctly or login.

The reason so many (very different) websites and apps are not working this morning is their reliance on one of the most popular cloud computing services, which boasts a 30% market share, supporting huge swathes of the modern internet.

Amazon Web Services is an immensely popular cloud platform, which has been nicknamed "the backbone of the modern internet," due to the huge numbers of websites, mobile apps, and video games that rely on AWS for storage, computing power, and database storage.

chart Down Detector reports numbers

In the UK, Down Detector has tracked over 4,000 reports every minute about a possible outage with Amazon Web Services (AWS) causing some of the biggest internet brands to go offline this morning (October 20)

|

DOWN DETECTOR UK

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has confirmed "increased error rates and latencies" for multiple services.

In an update on its website, it posted: "We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM."

Down Detector, an independent service that tracks the performance of apps and websites by monitoring social media for reports of possible errors, shows record spikes across the UK.

Over 7,500 Snapchat users have complained about the ephemeral photo and messaging service being down every minute, according to the latest data from Down Detector. Reports started around 8.03am BST before quickly spiking as more people noticed the outage.

ThousandEyes, which tracks the performance of networks, servers, and applications, has mapped out the impact of the AWS outage across the globe. While people living across the world have been hit, there is a large concentration in the US state of Virginia, often considered the global capital for data centres.

ThousandEyes, which is owned and operated by Cisco, maps out the outages across a global map, showing the highest concentration in the US state of Virginia

|

THOUSAND EYES

More than 14,000 users in the US have reported an outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) this morning, while over 4,000 have reported that the service is down in the UK as of 9:01am. According to its crowd-sourced data, the AWS-powered services with the biggest outages are Amazon, Ring, and Snapchat.

At the time of writing, Down Detector lists the following websites and services with vast outages:

  • Amazon Web Services
  • Snapchat
  • Ring
  • Lloyds Bank
  • Roblox
  • Halifax
  • Amazon.co.uk
  • Life360
  • My Fitness Pal
  • Xero
  • Signal
  • Zoom
  • Canva
  • HMRC
  • Blink Security
  • Slack
  • Fortnite
  • Asana
  • Alexa
  • Epic Games Store
  • Smartsheet
  • Wordle
  • Bank of Scotland
  • Tidal
  • Duolingo
  • Clash Royale
  • Amazon Prime Video
  • Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Chart Showing Down Detector outage reports

In the United States, Down Detector tracked an even bigger spike from disgruntled users unable to access online services backed by AWS

|

DOWN DETECTOR

Outages with AWS are rare, as the last major outage was in June 2023 — affecting Amazon's online site, Netflix, Disney+, and more.

AWS was launched in 2006 by Amazon. It began as a way to provide scalable cloud infrastructure to developers and businesses, offering services like storage, computing power, and databases.
Several major companies like Ring and Snapchat, rely on AWS to provide on-demand resources like servers, storage, and databases .

The company also aims to ensure global availability and strong security, making it a popular option.

Companies can also pay an upwards of millions of pounds per month through a "pay-as-you-go" model, with costs determined by services like compute, storage, and data transfer. Small businesses may spend a few hundred pounds or less, while large enterprise users can spend millions of pounds per month



TechBroadband
More From GB News