A global Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage has caused a major internet disruption, taking down dozens of popular apps and websites across multiple countries.
The issue began early on Monday morning when users started reporting widespread connection failures on several online platforms, from social media and gaming to banking and e-commerce.
According to Sky News, monitoring site Downdetector recorded more than 2,000 outage reports in the United States by 09:20 (10:20 SAST). The affected services include Snapchat, Canva, Zoom, Duolingo, Roblox, Fortnite, Signal, and MyFitnessPal.
Amazon’s own products — including Prime Video, Alexa, and Amazon Music — also experienced technical failures, alongside several financial services and websites such as Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
On its official service status page, AWS confirmed that it was experiencing “increased error rates and latencies” across multiple systems.
“We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” AWS said In a statement.
The company added that engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as the problems were detected and were posting updates every 45 minutes.
AWS operates as the digital infrastructure behind millions of companies worldwide, providing cloud computing services such as servers, databases, and storage systems.
When it experiences an outage, the effects ripple across nearly every sector of the internet. Tech analysts have described AWS as “the backbone of the modern web,” meaning that even a short disruption can affect critical online services and business operations.
Aravind Srinivas, chief executive of AI company Perplexity, confirmed that his company was among those affected, posting on X (formerly Twitter):
“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
The outage appears to be concentrated mainly in the United States, particularly around the state of Virginia, which hosts many of AWS’s largest data centres.
According to network tracking firm ThousandEyes, most of the reported disruptions are coming from North America, though users in Europe and parts of Asia have also reported difficulty accessing certain apps and websites.
This is not the first time AWS has faced a widespread technical issue. Similar incidents in recent years have caused global slowdowns, disrupting everything from video streaming and e-commerce to airline booking systems.
As of Monday mid-morning (SAST), AWS said it was making progress toward restoring services, but many platforms remained partially affected.
“We will continue to provide updates as we make progress,” the company said.
