Huge AWS Outage LIVE updates — Amazon, Microsoft, Apple Music and other services down

Amazon on a downswing

Amazon is seeing another downturn in reports. Could this be the beginning of the end or is just users no reporting outages as frequently. We'll continue to monitor.

In case you missed it...

As of this writing, our quiz asking how much this outage is affecing you on a scale of 1-100 is a 81%. But there's still time to vote!

So many red bars

Zooming out on Down Detector is truly a sight to behold. Everything from gambling sites to social networks to videos games are dealing with outages because of these AWS problems. It's scary.

AWS posts an update

AWS updated its status page, albeit a little late. The company said, "We continue to apply mitigation steps for network load balancer health and recovering connectivity for most AWS services. Lambda is experiencing function invocation errors because an internal subsystem was impacted by the network load balancer health checks. We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system. For EC2 launch instance failures, we are in the process of validating a fix and will deploy to the first AZ as soon as we have confidence we can do so safely. We will provide an update by 10:45 AM PDT."

Based on that, it looks like we're going to have to wait another 45+ minutes to see if anything major changes.

The losses are huge

We're receiving a lot of interesting tidbits from different analysts talking about the far-reaching effects of this outage. One that stood out says that $75 million is being lost per hour that this outage continues — with Amazon itself taking more than $72 million of that figure.

The data comes from Tenscope, and here's what it shows in terms of losses for some of the major companies:

• Amazon: $72,831,050 per hour 
• Snapchat: $611,986 per hour
• Zoom: $532,580 per hour 
• Roblox: $411,187 per hour 
• Fortnite: $399,543 per hour 
• Canva: $342,466 per hour 
• Slack: $194,064 per hour 
• Reddit: $148,402 per hour

As far as how Tenscope reached this conclusion, the company says it used "last year's publicly available revenue data for the affected companies, divided by 8,760 to determine hourly revenue loss during the AWS outage."

Ok, now they're taking away my Wendy's

Half the internet is down, so it was only a matter of time until the fast food industry felt it. But why Wendy's?

The long-reaching issues with outages like this

The internet is dependant on AWS, which is fine most of the time. When something goes wrong, though, it's a scary reminder of how important one service like this is. Rob van Lubek, EMEA Vice President, Dynatrace spoke about that in a comment to Tom's Guide.

"Global incidents like this are a clear reminder of how dependent our world has become on software and digital systems operating as expected. Today's IT environments are far more complex and interconnected than many realize, so when an outage occurs, the ripple effects can quickly spread across industries and into people's daily lives," said Rob van Lubek.

“For large enterprises especially, the difference between disruption and recovery often comes down to visibility and speed - how fast an organization can pinpoint what's gone wrong, understand why, and act to restore service continuity. That level of digital resilience requires deep insight into how systems connect and where vulnerabilities might emerge, so teams can focus on what truly matters in a crisis," he continued.

AWS will have an update soon

"We have taken additional mitigation steps to aid the recovery of the underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers and are now seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services. We have also identified and are applying next steps to mitigate throttling of new EC2 instance launches. We will provide an update by 10:00 AM PDT," reads the company's live blog.

Peloton joins the outage

We're seeing a huge rise in reports for Peloton (relative to the size of the service). It's at almost 800 reports, which is a high number. Users are obviously having issues connecting the relatively costly exercise service.

End in sight, maybe?

Amazon might have a solution on the horizon!

"We have narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues that impacted AWS Services. The root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers. We are throttling requests for new EC2 instance launches to aid recovery and actively working on mitigations," the company said on its AWS Health Dashboard.

It doesn't sound like we're out of the situation yet, but we're getting closer, which is good news.

How much is this affecting you?

Almost everyone is being impacted by this outage in some way, but we're curious how much it's messing with your flow. Vote in the poll above and let's see how much Tom's Guide readers are being put out by this AWS situation, which experts say could cost billions of dollars.

"The home delivery specialist Parcelhero says that, when a similar event happened last year at Crowdstrike, it cost $5.4 billion in losses for Fortune 500 companies and impacted a wide variety of companies globally," said Parcelhero’s Head of Consumer Research, David Jinks.

Higher than the original

We're seeing more reports on Down Detector for AWS than when this first started. The previous peak was around 6,000, and now it's up to 6,400. It's clear this outage is going to last a while longer, but hopefully not for too long, as the internet is really struggling today.

A small update to say... not much

AWS released a status update that doesn't offer much clarity. In short, the company acknowledges the issue and is investigating, which was already the assumed situation.

"Oct 20 8:04 AM PDT We continue to investigate the root cause for the network connectivity issues that are impacting AWS services such as DynamoDB, SQS, and Amazon Connect in the US-EAST-1 Region. We have identified that the issue originated from within the EC2 internal network. We continue to investigate and identify mitigations," reads the AWS status page.

A sudden Verizon spike

It looks like some people are experiencing issues with Verizon, though it's unclear whether it's landlines or mobile at this time. We also don't know if this one is linked to AWS or something else entirely, but we'll certainly keep an eye on it either way.

Pinterest is on the rise

Pinterest, another popular social network, is seeing a rise in reports. Like many of the big outages, we have to assume this one is connected to AWS and the ongoing issues it's having. It really puts into perspective how much we rely on Amazon Web Services to keep the internet chugging along smoothly.

This one is a big problem

For those who aren't in the know, Life360 is a location-sharing app that families and friends use in close circles to see each other's live locations on a private map. This is good for establishing designated meeting points, and giving people an SOS button for emergencies, while also ensuring people get home safe.

This service (unfortunately) is on AWS, and the app is down for a lot of people. For those who are just looking after their loved ones, this is incredibly problematic.

More issues confirmed by Amazon

Another update has just dropped on the AWS status page, and it's more issues creeping up. "Network connectivity issues" are plaguing the web services platform, so others will see them too. But "early signs of recovery" are being spotted, as the root cause continues to be investigated.

Yep, Venmo is down again

Oh boy, here we go again. With a ginormous spike of 4,440 outage reports on Down detector, Venmo is down again!

As we've seen from the past one, your money should be safe if you have any in transit. And you can report anything that seems off with your transfers once you're back on. But this again seems to be down to that rate cap. No update from AWS yet on lifting it!

BREAKING: A new update from Amazon confirms "significant" errors

When it rains, it pours for Amazon. The company has now confirmed some significant API errors (basically the way developers plug their work into), and connectivity issues across multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region!

We're starting to see what that means across lots of services.

AWS problems have exposed how dependent the UK has become on "fragile cloud infrastructure"

While in the U.S. there's been some big outages of banks and grocery services, the U.K. has seen outages of Government sites like HMRC (the bit that deals with tax and revenue) and the overall Government website.

This is incredible problematic, as Cybersecurity Expert Christian Espinosa from Blue Goat Cyber talks about.

“The widespread outage that affected Amazon Web Services and major platforms across the UK is a stark reminder that our digital world is built on a surprisingly fragile foundation. Cloud concentration, where a handful of providers host most of our critical systems, creates a single point of failure," Espinosa comments.

"When one data region or provider goes down, ripple effects hit everything from retail and finance to logistics and communications. For UK businesses, this affects security more than prductivity. During outages, normal safeguards are often bypassed: staff use personal devices, backup credentials circulate, and attackers exploit the confusion."

BREAKING: Tidal is down

This spike makes the potential Apple Music outage look like a minor speed bump! Over 1,000 reports in the past few minutes, with 54% of people across the U.S. reporting audio streaming issues. This, again (I believe) is probably down to the rate cap that AWS has put in place to ease pressure while fixes are implemented.

Apple system status suggests Music is back... Let's see

Even though Apple Music outage reports continues to grow, Apple itself is confirming that the outage has been resolved. We'll see whether this is true in a few minutes if that curve goes down.

Also worth noting if you're having business, school management or iCloud issues, the Cupertino crew are already looking into these too.

Pinterest outages spike

Looking for tasteful living room ideas or inspirational quotes written entirely in helvetica? That's not going to be possible for a lot of you, as the rate cap has seemingly spiked outage reports on Down Detector about Pinterest.

A new statement from Amazon is IN

OK, so, we're all a bit confused because Amazon tells us its fixed, but then services are still experiencing problems. Now there's an update, and it paints a bit more of a picture.

Basically, what Amazon is trying to say here is that while the DNS issue has been fixed (the digital phonebook of the internet now directs people to the right places), the tool that connects people is still jammed, and are causing massive slowdown across all of its sites.

This is why services are being rate limited, to stop the system from crashing and allow the existing problems to fully clear. This is a temporary cap on how many people can go to certain sites — like a bouncer at a crowded Halloween party (I'm dressing up as Peacemaker btw). This should stop the system from crashing and allow existing problems to fully clear.

BREAKING: Huge spike of outages on Instacart

Online grocery shopping might be off the cards for you atm, as a huge jump in Instacart outage reports has just occurred. We're trying to get to the bottom of what's happened here, but everything seems to be tying back to the EC2 instance launches not being effective or scaling to a larger pool of users.

Apple Music's second spike exceeds first outage

Uh oh... The peak around the first stint of the AWS outage hit 359. Now it's peaked again at 364 with users reporting music streaming problems. Issues seem to be localized to New York and Los Angeles right now, but could be more widespread as the U.S. wakes up and tries to play their get up playlist!

BREAKING: Wordle joins Snapchat in a second spike

I hope you managed to get your Wordle answers in to keep your streak alive, because it looks like the game is down again! Users are struggling to login to play today's puzzle.

This joins the second spike of outages led by Snapchat.

BREAKING: AWS 'making progress on resolving the issue'

Amazon has updated its AWS status page on the ongoing issues it's clearing up, stating: "We are making progress on resolving the issue with new EC2 instance launches in the US-EAST-1 Region and are now able to successfully launch new instances in some Availability Zones. We are applying similar mitigations to the remaining impacted Availability Zones to restore new instance launches. As we continue to make progress, customers will see an increasing number of successful new EC2 launches."

This essentially means that services should soon see a return to form, as we've seen with Chime, Starbucks and other services that saw continued issues. That should mean that Snapchat will see some fixes soon (fingers crossed), as it's now see a second spike of reports on Down Detector.

More updates on AWS will be on the way soon, and we'll be keeping track!

AWS outage: Over 1,000 companies affected

The AWS outage is massive, and to know just how big it is, there are over 1,000 companies affected by the Amazon Web Services issues this morning, as per a BBC report.

In fact, Down Detector noted that it saw 6.5 million reports globally, and that includes apps like Snapchat, Ring, Reddit, Starbucks and plenty more (find out all the apps and services affected by the AWS outage).

If you've been affected, you definitely won't be alone!

Is Reddit back up and running?

Reddit saw a big outage at around 5am EST / 10am BST, but it now appears to be fixed according to its status page. That said, the servers that support Reddit are still seeing performance issues, but at the very least, reddit.com is operational now! With just a few lingering outage reports on Down Detector.

At the very least, it works for me and the team. Will Snapchat see the same fixes soon? Here's hoping.

Chime is back up and running (it appears)

Along with Ring, Chime is seeing a massive decline in outage reports over on Down Detector, and according to its status page, all of its services are fully operational! That's a couple of services now on their way to see a full recovery, but we're not out of the woods just yet.

Snapchat continues to see a steady rise in outage reports, while other services like Zoom and Apple Music appear to still be experiencing some issues. Since AWS is still going through its fixes, we're sure to still see a few issues pop up. We'll keep you updated!

Ring is being fixed!

While Ring's support page shows there are still partial outages across its systems, Down Detector shows a steep decline in outage reports! Now under 1,000 (934 reports at the time of writing), that's a good sign that the service is coming back to normal (finally).

Amazon is still sorting out issues with AWS, so it's only a matter of time until we see all services work as they should. We're keeping track of how it looks, but in the meantime, it appears Ring and Chime are getting the fixes they need.

Snapchat going through another spike?

Turns out Snapchat is going through yet another spike! On Down Dectector, Snapchat has seen a major dip after AWS has been reportedly fixed, but it's now seeing a steady rise back up to nearly 10,000 reports.

This rise started as of 8 a.m. ET / 1 p.m. BST, so it could be that East Coast users are now waking up to a wave of issues. Will that second-spike reach the heights of before? Here's hoping the fix will clear that issue right up.

You can find out more in our Snapchat outage live blog if that's the service you're focused on!

Starbucks finally seeing a fix?

Even those morning coffees (to redeem points, anyway) from Starbucks were being affected by the AWS outage! It's been on the rise, but now it's finally seeing a dip in reports, which is hopefully signs that a fix is now in place.

Multiple Ring systems are still down

Along with Chime, Ring is experiencing multiple issues with its systems. According to its status page, Ring.com, Ring Protect, Live Calls, Video On Demand and more are seeing a partial outage, and this is backed up by the continued rise in reports on Down Detector.

Chime is still 'continuing to monitor for any further issues'

As per Chime's status page, the service is still experiencing outages. That includes its website, mobile app, MyPay feature and more. While Chime states the incident has been resolved, it's still experiencing issues with reports on Down Detector on the rise.

For now, Chime is "continuing to monitor for any further issues."

Ring, Chime outage on the rise

Chime and Ring are continuing to see increased outage reports, according to Down Detector, with over 4,000 reports currently. This shows the issue isn't fixed completely just yet.

As per the AWS status page, the latest update states: "AWS features that depend on Lambda’s SQS polling capabilities such as Organization policy updates are also experiencing elevated processing times."

This could be the problem causing services like Ring and Chime to be down.

Still some issues with AWS

It's clear that AWS is still working on the issue, with Ring and Chime now seeing a spike in outage reports. Down detector shows that while reports have gone down, there are still problems to iron out!

Amazon 'continuing to work towards full recovery'

In its latest update, Amazon has stated: "We are continuing to work towards full recovery for EC2 launch errors, which may manifest as an Insufficient Capacity Error. Additionally, we continue to work toward mitigation for elevated polling delays for Lambda, specifically for Lambda Event Source Mappings for SQS. We will provide an update by 5:00 AM PDT."

So, while AWS services are coming back to normal, there are still some issues to iron out. Hopefully, we'll see a full return to form in the next update.

Apple Music, Zoom back on the rise

Apple Music is back on the rise with over 250 reports, but this isn't as bad as other services have been (Ring is still on the rise, too). Even Zoom on Down Detector is starting to see a spike again. It isn't all completely fixed, but as Amazon confirmed, AWS services should be coming back to normal. We'll keep you posted!

AWS outage: All the sites and services affected

Over 40 services have been affected by the Amazon Web Services outage, which shows just how important the platform is for many different brands. Everything from Amazon, such as Alexa and Prime Video, to Snapchat and Strava went down, but fortunately, many of these services appear to be coming back to normal.

“When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu. Outages like this cause frustrated users, but also triggers a domino effect across payment flows," Monica Eaton, Founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and Fi911 commented. "Failed authorizations, duplicate charges, broken confirmation pages, all of that fuels a wave of disputes that merchants will be cleaning up for weeks. And once a customer files a dispute, you are already on the back foot.”

Here's a list of all the services affected:

• Amazon (including Alexa and Prime Video)
• Apple Music
• Blink
• Chime
• Coinbase
• Delta
• Duolingo
• Epic Games Store
• Fanduel
• Fortnite
• HBO Max
• Hinge
• Life 360
• Lyft
• McDonalds app
• Microsoft Teams
• My Fitness Pal
• Office 365
• PlayStation Network
• Pokemon Go
• Reddit
• Ring
• Roblox
• Roku
• Signal
• Slack
• Snapchat
• Square
• Starbucks
• Steam
• Strava
• Ubisoft Connect
• Venmo
• VR Chat
• Wordle
• Xbox
• Xero
• Zoom

Ring still seeing major issues

While some services like Reddit are getting fixed, Ring outage reports are on the rise, now at 3,296 as of writing. Hopefully, we'll see that number drop like the many other services right now.

Reddit outage reports down nearly 50%

This is an encouraging sign. Still a long way away from the baseline, but that's a big dip in a short amount of time!

NOT STARBUCKS!?

For those looking to redeem points on their monday morning caffeine infusion may come a cropper, as the Starbucks app is down, due to the AWS issues. The fix has been deployed, but Amazon's now going through a backlog of smaller issues to fix these smaller disruptions.

Telecoms impacted?

This I didn't expect. BT in the U.K. does have a site that runs on AWS, which is now loading fine. But broadband problems are being reported and there's a big spike around it.

The physical layer of the broadband connectivity is not dealt with by cloud providers, but it does run the things like customer account management, billing and network intelligence (to keep things running). So something may have happened here.

BREAKING: Reddit is on the case

Image 1 of 2

The issue has appeared as an incident report on Reddit's status page, and the Down detector reports have peaked. Something tells me AWS may have gotten around to looking at the Lambda and Cloudtrail problems.

BREAKING: Amazon confirms crisis is over, but a few issues to clean up

OK, so we have a new update from Amazon! In short, things are just about back to normal. The underlying DNS issue has "been fully mitigated," so the internet phonebook problem has been resolved. And because of that, "most AWS service operations are succeeding normally now."

But we're not fully out of the woods yet, as there are some lingering issues here. Namely "a backlog of events," as the giant traffic jam is still clearing for some specific tools like Lambda that runs code, and Cloudtrail that keeps a record of all the activity. I'm certain that Reddit uses these two services, so it's no big surprise to connect the dots and see this still being knocked out of service.

Ring is still down

Even though the AWS fix is deployed, Ring is still down for many people. Ring has (finally) acknowledged the outage across all its services and apps, and the Down detector outage reports are going back up.

Revenue loss expected in retailer chargebacks

With AWS outages, retailers get hit hard. It's one thing to talk about the outages of free services users are on. But what about retailers and paid-for services. They can cause issues like duplicate charges, broken confirmation pages and more.

“When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu. Outages like this cause frustrated users, but also triggers a domino effect across payment flows," Monica Eaton, Founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and Fi911 commented. "Failed authorizations, duplicate charges, broken confirmation pages, all of that fuels a wave of disputes that merchants will be cleaning up for weeks. And once a customer files a dispute, you are already on the back foot.”

Her advice to retailers seeing this? Get ahead of it: “The outage will end long before the disputes do. Any business that treats this as a one-day incident is already behind. Downtime happens, but silence and slow responses are what cause real damage.”

Over 9,000 outage reports for Reddit now!

55% of people reporting the app is down, while 34% are complaining about website outages. It's a sticky situation that seems to stretch beyond AWS fixes. Or there could be a scenario where the deployment of AWS' fix has knocked out Reddit. Nobody can be sure as Reddit's status page only reports "degraded performance."

Reddit spikes in U.K. too

This seems to be both app and website loading. How is Reddit going in the wrong direction when the fix is deployed!? We're looking into this now

BREAKING: Next update from Amazon is good news

Amazon is continuing to see "recovery across most of the affected AWS services." On top of that, the company confirms that "global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1" have also recovered.

With this in mind, we should start to expect a lot of these impacted services across gaming, streaming, banking and more to return to normal.

Square is now back

A lot of the internet's payment systems runs on Square, and it was knocked out by AWS outages. Now it's status has changed to up, so that should be resolved.

Wordle is back!

One of the more painful ones to us (given we love playing it every day and finding/sharing the answer) is Wordle. Wordle runs on AWS, and the network outage caused this to go down too. Now, fortunately, we're back up and running. Happy wordling!

Gamers rejoice! Things seem to be (almost) back to normal

Roblox is back to normal levels, Epic Games Store service seems to be back online (and Fortnite by extension), Dead by Daylight has resumed, and Steam, Rocket League and Pokémon GO are almost back to normal.

PlayStation Network is showing no issues too. Looks as if the fix has resolved some of the anti-cheat issues that seem to have caused the blockages due to AWS.

So far, according to the Reddit status page, the infrastructure of the service is undergoing "degraded performance," which is backed up by nearly 5,000 outage reports on Down Detector!

Amazon outage reports are down below 1,000. Chances are most of you can start shopping again on the app!

U.K. kinda sorta getting back to normal

Things seem to be on the way back to normal in my homeland. Government services are back to normal, and banks are on the way back.

What Redditors are seeing

This is what a lot of people on Reddit are seeing. This is indicative of the DNS and latency issues experienced in this AWS outage. Basically, the digital phonebook has been corrected, to take people to the right place, but the lanes of traffic haven't been fixed properly yet.

This is creating huge tailbacks on the digital highway of the internet, and causing loading issues like this. As per Amazon's advice, keep trying as things gradually go back to normal!

The data backs it up

Amazon has claimed that there are "significant signs of recovery," and the outage reports are dropping off quick on the AWS down detector. Fingers crossed this isn't just a "fixing your own front door at the expense of others" kind of situation (the dropping reports across other services indicate this isn't the case), but we'll keep an eye on it.

BREAKING: Another update from Amazon

So it looks like Amazon pressing the "Go" button appears to have fixed it. The team is working through a "backlog of queued requests," but things are on the up and up.

Someone tell that to Reddit, though!

Desktop Reddit still works — but mobile app is down

Well this is awkward. As other services seem to be seeing services gradually get back to normal, AWS' fix may have knocked out Reddit's app.

Over 2,000 reports were made in the past 5 minutes on down detector. Luckily, it seems to just be the app, as the website is working in all our tests.

Uh oh... Reddit just went out

That's a huge spike of Reddit outages! Just happened.

BREAKING: update from Amazon

OK! Now we're getting somewhere. According to the most recent AWS update, the fix is starting to work. The first big fix is in place, fixing the DNS problem (correcting the digital phonebook), and that is creating some "early signs of recovery."

But Amazon is not done yet. Things will be bumpy for a while as additional latency is expected (traffic will be moving slowly for a while), and there's still a big backlog.

But in short, Amazon's hit the "go" button on the fix, and they're watching to make sure it works.

Elon Musk gets smug about it

Because of course he does. Also, for context, X went down on March, May and July this year (so far).

Roleplayers are facing problems too!

CharacterAI is serving as a resource for all your RP needs with an AI avatar. But since it's a service running on AWS, we're seeing outages here too!

Problems with airlines too!

United airlines is down, and users of other airlines are experiencing app problems too.

People are worried about Venmo

And understandably so! Venmo is holding a lot of customer money right now, and with outages to the app, people can't get to it!

Heading in the right direction

With AWS working in parallel on multiple fixes, it looks as if they're starting to take affect. in the U.S., outage reports are on the way down, and in the U.K., it's peaked with a few key services reports starting to come down too (think banks and government services).

BREAKING: Update from Amazon

We have an update! Let's break it down. In short, Amazon's found the main bad guy, and it's a DNS issue!

DNS is the internet's phone book, packing a name (the URL) and a secret phone number (the IP address).

All of these are stored in the digital filing cabinet known as DynamoDB, and several fixes at once are being deployed to speedily fix this issue.

Amazon recommends that if anyone is facing issues to "continue to retry any failed requests."

Lonely hearts

Dating apps are also being hit too, as Hinge has been disrupted by the AWS outage. People are experiencing app opening faults and server connection issues.

The 2am update has not happened

According to AWS, an update will be shared "as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM."

This hasn't happened, so I'll update you instead! It looks as if some of the AWS issues with the US-East-1 region (what looks to be one of the key centerpoints for a lot of the internet) have been resolved, but not all the way. Reports have started dropping by 20-30% across the board.

These updates haven't hit the UK yet, as reports continue to be high with no sign of tailing off.

OpenAI impacted

Looks as if some of OpenAI's services rely on AWS too. They're experiencing some Single Sign On (SSO) issues that will stop people logging into their ChatGPT, and the API for developer's apps to work.

Don't believe the Ring status page

This is a weird one. We all see the spike on Ring doorbells service on downdetector. Yet, the status page shows it's appearing as operational.

Surely this page would update in real-time with issues spotted, so no idea why it hasn't when AWS goes down. "No incidents reported today" reads the Oct 20, 2025 status.

Coinbase is down, but your funds are safe

Just to reassure anyone who trades crypto and has seen themselves unable to jump in to see their walled, Coinbase has confirmed that "all funds are safe."

The most concerning part about the U.K. side of things

While in the U.S. it's looking like all private companies have been hit by the AWS issues, in the U.K., the issue is a little more deeply rooted in some key infrastructure.

Online banking is down, and most concerningly, it's looking like it's impacting government services too.

No sign of this in the UK

This is what's making me a little cautious to say the issue has actually been fixed. In the U.K. those outage graphs continue to go up.

Something's happened

You can see how the symmetry of these peaks match up quite nicely with AWS' movement. My suspicion is the team has identified the issue. But we'll wait and see...

Update from Amazon

"Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issues, and fully understanding the root cause," a rep from AWS has said in the most recent update on the progress fixing this outage.

A fix may have just been implemented

Standby for more, but we're seeing the peaks of outage reports start to fall off. All we know at the moment is that Amazon is working on the issue. The devs may have identified the problem.

What streaming services have been hit?

If you were looking to stream your favorite movies or TV shows, you may be running into some issues! Disney+, Prime Video and Hulu have been hit by this outage.

The problem is global

Meanwhile, a look over at Down Detector in the UK shows how widespread this is. The AWS outage in North Virginia is hitting us Brits too, and it's impacting Snapchat, Ring, all the usual suspects. Concerningly, it's also hitting banks too.

More on the AWS issue

What is Amazon DynamoDB? Think of a super-fast digital filing cabinet that many apps use to save and find info quickly (like user profiles or game scores). With this being disrupted, things that rely on it will likely stop working (as we're seeing across a whole lot of services).

As for the 20 other services that are impacted (affected but not totally broken), these will cause the services to run slowly or have hiccups. This was first reported at 12:11am PDT (3:11am ET, 8:11am BST).

Here's what's going on

So...there's a real technical issue going on here. It's disrupting DynamoDB and impacting 20 other services, which leads to "increased error rates and latencies."

Let's break it down — imagine AWS as the huge digital power plant for the internet. North Virginia (US-EAST-1 Region) is one of the biggest neighborhoods this plant serves. The increased error rates means a lot of packages of data are getting dropped or sent to the wrong place, and the latencies mean that those delivery trucks are moving really slowly.

The big one here is AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is responsible for hosting a whole lot of services and websites across the web. And because of servers going down across the planet, it's having a knock-on effect on other websites, services and games.

For example, huge outages are being reported at Snapchat, Robinhood, Venmo, Roblox, Fortnite, Ring, Epic Games Store, Lyft, Pokémon GO and many more.

That's a big spike!

For Amazon alone (excluding Alexa and AWS), reports have hit over 15,000 with no signs of slowing. Most users are reporting that the mobile app is hit heaviest.