Amazon struggling to fix AWS outages
Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS is struggling to recover from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally, Reuters reports.
After more than six hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 10:00 a.m. ET (3pm UK time). But AWS acknowledged it was still experiencing elevated errors.
In its latest status update, AWS says:
“We can confirm significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services … We are investigating,”
To aid the recovery, AWS said it was putting in place limits on the number of requests that can be made on its platform.
While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day.
Indeed, this chart shows how reports of outages at Snapchat rose an hour ago:
Key events
AWS released another update a few minutes ago, saying that it is continuing to apply “mitigation stems for network load balancer health and recovering connectivity for most AWS services”.
Pointing to its Lambda system – a compute service that runs code without the need to manage servers, AWS said it is “experiencing function invocation errors because an internal subsystem was impacted by the network load balancer health checks.”
AWS said it is currently trying to recover the internal Lambda system, adding that it is set to provide another update at around 10:45am PDT.
Starbucks was hit by the outage earlier but has now confirmed its app is working again, according to reports. It came after more than 1,800 people reported issues with the app earlier today.
A spokesperson for the coffee chain told the BBC: “I can confirm that our mobile order ahead app and pay features are all operating normally. We experienced very limited interruption and were back up and running quickly.”
Interim summary
Time for a recap….
Experts have warned of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet after a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing service brought down apps and websites around the world.
The affected platforms included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company.
More than 1,000 companies worldwide were affected, according to Downdetector, a site that monitors internet outages, with 6.5m reports of problems from users including more than 1m reports in the US, 400,000 in the UK and 200,000 in Australia.
In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were also problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website on Monday morning. Also in the UK, Ring users complained on social media that their doorbells were not working.
Here’s the full story:
The latest word from Amazon is that its software engineers are taking “additional mitigation steps” to help its network load balancing recover, following the problems at its Virginia data centre operations.
It is also taking steps to mitigate the throttling of new virtual servers, and reports a recovery in its API (application protocol interface) services, which means apps are finding it easier to communicate….
Amazon is due to release a fresh update on the situation at 10am PDT (6pm UK time).
UK MPs are demanding to know why Amazon isn’t being treated as a ‘critical third party’ to Britain’s financial sector.
Lawyers have warned that AWS customers are unlikely to receive much compensation from the company
Another update from Amazon has landed!
They say their engineers have now taken “additional mitigation steps” to try and get Amazon Web Services up and running properly.
The latest update says:
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.
Amazon are promising another update by 10:00 AM PDT (6pm UK time).
The UK’s National Rail website is among the sites caught up in today’s internet problems.
The AWS outage led to occasional performance issues with the site, and its app, this morning, with some users experiencing slow response times. It’s understood that services began returning to normal in late morning, UK time.
Adventure Science Center seeks cash payments due to AWS disruption
The Adventure Science Center in Tennessee has told visitors that it would rather they pay in cash, rather than on a credit card, today, due to the Amazon Web Services outage.
The Centre says:
Cash preferred due to global AWS outage. Credit card payments can be accepted in person, but there will be delays. Thank you for your understanding!
Science stops for no outage! ⚡ We’re still open for exploration, but due to the global AWS outage, cash is preferred at this time. Credit card payments can be accepted in person, but there may be delays. Thanks for rolling with us, Nashville!
— Adventure Science Center (@adventuresci) October 20, 2025
Why are Amazon’s shares up today?
Amazon’s share price is still up around 0.7% today, despite the AWS problem that brought large parts of the internet down.
AJ Bell head of financial analysis Danni Hewson says:
“It might seem surprising after the massive global disruption caused by today’s AWS outage that Amazon’s shares are actually on the front foot, but for many investors the issues put into perspective exactly how much of the internet relies on its services.
AWS: We’ve narrowed down the cause of the issues
AWS say they have “narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues” that are affecting its services.
Nearly nine hours (!) after problems were first reported, knocking website and popular apps offline. AWS says it is now “throttling” requests for new virtual servers, to speed up the recovery process, and pointed the finger of blame a subsystem handling load balancing.
AWS explains:
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.
Amazon is still trying to fix the operational problem bedevilling its AWS operations.
The company says:
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.
[Reminder: EC2 is the service that creates virtual servers for AWS customers to use in the cloud, while DynamoDB is a core database service].
Life360 reports technical difficulties and delays
The Amazon Web Services outage appears to be affecting location-tracker Life360, a popular app with millions of families worldwide.
Life360 provides location history, place alerts (activated when a user arrives at or leaves a certain location), driving information and a ‘stuff tracking’ option.
The San Francisco-based company, which reported 88m monthly active users in August, has warned that it experiencing “some technical difficulties”
We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties which may cause delays in accessing your Life360 account. We are working hard to resolve this as soon as possible. 🙏
— Life360 (@Life360) October 20, 2025
Downdetector shows a jump in reported outages today, and says the problems are possibly related to issues at Amazon Web Services…
Amazon struggling to fix AWS outages
Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS is struggling to recover from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally, Reuters reports.
After more than six hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 10:00 a.m. ET (3pm UK time). But AWS acknowledged it was still experiencing elevated errors.
In its latest status update, AWS says:
“We can confirm significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services … We are investigating,”
To aid the recovery, AWS said it was putting in place limits on the number of requests that can be made on its platform.
While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day.
Indeed, this chart shows how reports of outages at Snapchat rose an hour ago:
Treasury Committee: Is government concerned about dependance on overseas IT?
UK politicians are demanding answers over the disruption at Amazon Web Services today that has grounded many website and apps today.
The House of Commons’ Treasury Committee has written to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Lucy Rigby, to ask why the government has not, yet, designated Amazon a “critical third party” to the UK’s financial services sector.
Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier points out that Amazon recently told the committee:
Financial services customers are choosing to use AWS to support and improve their security and resilience. AWS has a comprehensive approach to resilience that spans multiple layers of protection, ensuring businesses can reliably maintain operations.
That claim rings a little hollow, now that Lloyds Bank customers were unable to access their accounts this morning.
As such, Dame Meg wants to know….
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1) Why has HM Treasury not designated Amazon Web Services or any other major technology firm as a CTP for the purposes of the Critical Third Parties Regime?
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2) How soon can we expect firms to be brought into this regime?
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3) There is speculation that the Amazon Web Services outage related to its operations in the United States. Is HM Treasury concerned that seemingly key parts of our IT infrastructure are hosted abroad?
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4) HMRC may also have been affected by today’s outage. What work is HM Treasury doing with HMRC to look at what went wrong, and how this may be prevented in future?
