A major global internet disruption on Monday left millions of users unable to access popular apps and websites, from Snapchat and Roblox to Zoom and Canva. The issue has been traced back to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon, which powers a large part of the internet’s digital infrastructure. 

Global spike in outage reports

Outage-tracking site Downdetector reported an unprecedented surge in issue reports. The platform, which is owned by Ookla, told the BBC that it recorded more than four million reports of issues globally just this morning – more than double its typical weekday average of 1.8 million.

“At 06:56 UTC (02:56 AM EDT) users started reporting issues with AWS, in particular with the US East 1 region,” the company said. “As of 09:50 AM BST (08:50 UTC), over 500 companies, across all of our 66 sites, are reporting issues.”

More than 400,000 reports came from the UK alone within two hours of the outage starting, according to Downdetector.

Platforms hit across the world

Dozens of major services and apps have been impacted, including Snapchat, Zoom, Roblox, Signal, Slack, Duolingo, Fortnite, Canva, and PlayStation Network. Even government websites such as the UK’s HMRC were reportedly affected, with many users seeing error messages.

Other platforms experiencing disruptions included Venmo, Coinbase, Smartsheet, Life360, Epic Games, Apple TV, Ring, Goodreads, Chime, CollegeBoard, Whatnot, Crunchyroll, and The New York Times.

Downdetector noted that “it’s hard to say just how many apps have been knocked out by this, but suffice to say it isn't a short list.”

PUBG and gaming services hit

Gamers were among those affected. The PUBG-Battlegrounds support team confirmed that players were facing login problems, directly linked to the AWS disruption.

“We are currently experiencing issues due to server instability, which may prevent players from logging in or accessing matchmaking. We apologise for the inconvenience caused,” the team said on X.

They further added, “The current server instability issue is being caused by a global external infrastructure service outage and we are working closely with the service provider to identify the cause and restore stability as soon as possible.”

AWS confirms service issues

Amazon Web Services acknowledged the outage on its official service status page, stating it was seeing “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region.”

The company added, “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause. We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”

AWS engineers are reportedly working to identify and fix the root cause of what it described as “significant error rates for requests” in one of its key endpoints in North Virginia—a critical hub for global data traffic.

Impact across industries

The outage has affected everything from social media to gaming, e-commerce, and finance. Coinbase said its users were unable to access the platform due to the AWS issue. “We’re aware many users are currently unable to access Coinbase due to an AWS outage,” the company confirmed.

Meanwhile, Perplexity AI’s CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post that the “root cause of the disruptions was an AWS-related issue,” which temporarily halted the company’s operations.

Amazon’s own ecosystem was not spared—its flagship site Amazon.com, along with Prime Video and Alexa, also faced intermittent connectivity problems.

Not all platforms affected

While AWS clients struggled, several other major tech firms remained stable. Google’s services – which run on its proprietary cloud platform – continued to operate normally. Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, were also unaffected, as was Elon Musk’s X, which he confirmed in a post saying the platform was “unaffected.”

Experts note that some companies use multiple cloud providers or have backup systems in place to minimise disruptions during such outages.

The scale of AWS

Amazon Web Services is a dominant force in cloud computing, holding roughly a third of the global market share. Its servers host data and applications for millions of businesses, universities, and governments worldwide. AWS provides services ranging from storage and virtual servers to email, networking, and security.

When AWS faces an outage, it reverberates across the internet—affecting websites and applications that rely on its infrastructure.

This isn’t the first time AWS has experienced a major breakdown. A similar incident earlier this year disrupted several high-profile websites, including Google’s search, email, Gemini, and YouTube services.