What you need to know about the AWS outage and how it’s disrupting your apps

20 October 2025

On Monday, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud provider, suffered a major outage that exposed how risky it can be to rely too much on one cloud provider. The blackout began early in the US-EAST-1 region (Northern Virginia) and quickly spread, disrupting major financial platforms, government services, gaming networks, and consumer apps around the world.

What you need to know about the AWS outage and how it’s disrupting your apps

The issue came from a DNS resolution failure in DynamoDB, one of AWS’s core databases. Because many AWS services depend on US-EAST-1, a problem in that single region caused apps in other parts of the world to break, even if they weren’t hosted there.

Though AWS says its services have recovered, the outage proved that simply spreading your apps across different Availability Zones or regions within AWS is not always enough. To avoid widespread disruption, businesses need stronger disaster recovery strategies, such as warm standby systems or multiple cloud providers. AWS service credits rarely cover the actual cost of downtime, so it’s smart to build your own resilience rather than depend entirely on their guarantees.

The issue started shortly after midnight Pacific Time (3:11 AM Eastern). AWS began reporting errors and slow responses in its US-EAST-1 region, its oldest and busiest hub, which handles around 35–40% of global traffic.

Because many services depend on US-EAST-1 for critical operations, a local issue quickly turned into a global problem. Engineers applied fixes within 2 hours, and by 5:27 AM ET, most requests were flowing again. The primary DNS issue was entirely resolved by 3:35 AM PT (11:35 AM UK time), though some services took longer to catch up due to backlogs.

AWS traced the problem to a DNS error affecting DynamoDB, a key database service. When DNS failed, apps couldn’t find or connect to the database, which caused widespread service errors.

Security experts confirmed it was a technical glitch, likely a DNS or BGP misconfiguration, not a cyberattack.

Many AWS services rely on each other. When DynamoDB’s DNS broke, it also affected EC2, IAM, and DynamoDB Global Tables. Apps hosted outside the US also went down if they depended on US-EAST-1 endpoints.

This proved that using multiple Availability Zones alone isn’t enough. The problem wasn’t hardware; it was the regional DNS and network layers that many services share. A flaw in US-EAST-1 can undermine redundancy elsewhere.

The outage disrupted major sectors around the world:

Trading and payment platforms such as Coinbase, Robinhood, Venmo, and Chime went offline, disrupting transactions and causing losses. UK banks, including Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland, also faced disruptions during working hours.

UK government sites such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) went offline. Airlines like Delta and United experienced reservation issues, while tools such as Slack, Zoom, and Jira became unstable, affecting business operations.

Popular platforms felt the impact too. Amazon shopping, Prime Video, and Music experienced downtime. Ring doorbells and Alexa devices stopped responding. Social and gaming platforms like Snapchat, Canva, Roblox, Fortnite, and PlayStation Network also went down.

This global chain reaction showed how dependent services are on US-EAST-1 for authentication, metadata, and API lookups. It’s a clear reminder that relying too much on a single cloud region can take your systems down with it.

The AWS outage on October 20, 2025, lasted only a few hours, but the financial and operational impact was huge. Companies that depend on AWS for critical services lost money, productivity, and customer trust.

Trading platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase experienced transaction disruptions, which affected market confidence. E-commerce and logistics companies lost revenue from failed orders and chargebacks. Tools like Slack and Zoom slowed work across global teams. Despite the outage, Amazon’s stock showed minimal movement, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s ability to recover quickly. As of October 20, 2025, pre-market trading stood at $213.89, a 0.40% increase from the previous close of $213.03. The real financial losses, however, were felt by the businesses that rely on AWS for their operations.

AWS promises 99.99% uptime under its SLAs, but compensation for downtime is limited to service credits, not cash. These credits rarely cover the real cost of an outage. Companies end up bearing most of the financial risk, which is why investing in robust backup and disaster recovery strategies is essential.

For sectors like finance and healthcare, outages aren’t just inconvenient; they’re compliance issues. These industries must meet strict recovery targets, and any downtime can trigger audits or lead to new regulations. The outage also highlighted the risks to public services, with platforms like the UK’s HMRC going offline due to single-provider dependence.

The outage made one thing clear: your systems must be able to withstand a failure in one region without taking the rest of the system down.

Two metrics are key:

For critical workloads, Warm Standby or Active/Active setups offer the best protection, though they require more investment.

The outage started with a DNS failure in AWS’s control plane. To avoid this, base your resilience on the data plane, for example, using globally distributed DNS like Amazon Route 53 to reroute traffic to healthy regions automatically. Avoid failover mechanisms that depend on control plane actions, as they can fail during outages.

The goal is to make sure your infrastructure isn’t tied too tightly to a single cloud provider.

Relying only on vendor guarantees isn’t enough. You need to own your resilience.

The October 20 outage wasn’t just a glitch. It was a warning about the risks of putting all your trust in a single cloud provider. Building architectural diversity is no longer optional; it’s essential.