On October 20, 2025, a major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage disrupted some of the world’s most popular websites and apps, marking one of the most significant internet disruptions of the year. The outage lasted for several hours and affected global users, exposing the internet’s heavy dependence on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.
Snapchat Outage
During the AWS disruption, Snapchat users across the globe faced login issues, message delivery failures, and problems loading stories. Nearly 90% of users reported connection failures, while others experienced partial functionality. The outage affected millions of users simultaneously, leading to widespread discussion on social media platforms.
Amazon AWS Outage
The outage originated from AWS’s US-EAST-1 (Northern Virginia) data center region — one of Amazon’s largest hubs. The company identified “increased error rates and network latency” due to an internal routing issue within its EC2 and DNS management systems. This failure cascaded through dependent systems, temporarily crippling services relying on Amazon’s cloud backbone.
Snapchat Not Working in India?
In India, Snapchat users also reported difficulties accessing the app on both Android and iOS devices. Features such as Snap Map, Stories, and Chat were temporarily unavailable. While many assumed a local server issue, AWS later confirmed that the India disruption was linked to the broader global outage. Once Amazon restored its systems, Snapchat and other affected platforms gradually returned to normal.
Impact of the AWS Outage
The AWS disruption had wide-ranging effects, including:
- Multiple popular apps — including Snapchat, Netflix, and Spotify — experienced downtime.
- Banking and payment systems faced slow processing and connection errors.
- Smart home devices like Alexa and Ring temporarily went offline.
- Corporate tools such as Slack, Trello, and Office 365 reported partial disruptions.
- E-commerce and delivery services saw interruptions in tracking and payment gateways.
The event demonstrated how dependent modern digital infrastructure has become on a few major cloud providers.
Preventing Future Cloud Disasters
The outage raised serious concerns about cloud reliability. Experts suggest companies adopt stronger fail-safe mechanisms to avoid such global downtime:
- Deploy applications across multiple AWS regions or availability zones.
- Use multi-cloud strategies — spreading services across Amazon, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
- Implement redundancy and real-time monitoring systems to detect issues early.
- Test disaster recovery and data-replication plans regularly.
These steps could reduce single-point vulnerabilities and improve resilience against large-scale failures.
Are Systems Back Online?
By late evening on October 20, AWS confirmed that most of its services were restored and fully operational. However, users reported lingering issues such as delayed notifications, failed uploads, and login errors for several hours after the fix. Full stabilization across all regions occurred by the next day.
Total Loss of the Outage?
No permanent data loss was reported from the AWS incident. The outage primarily caused temporary service interruptions rather than any destruction of stored data. The real cost, however, came in the form of business downtime, loss of ad revenue, and decreased productivity. Analysts estimate that global losses from this outage could reach tens of millions of dollars due to cascading service interruptions.
Disclaimer
The information provided above is based on publicly available reports and verified industry updates as of October 2025. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, details may change as Amazon and affected companies release further updates. Readers are advised to follow official statements from AWS for the latest information.
FAQs – Amazon AWS & Snapchat Outage
Q1. What caused the Amazon AWS outage on October 20, 2025?
The outage was caused by a routing and DNS configuration failure in Amazon’s US-EAST-1 region, leading to global downtime across several AWS-dependent platforms.
Q2. Why did Snapchat stop working during the AWS outage?
Snapchat relies on AWS servers for its core operations. When Amazon’s cloud experienced the outage, Snapchat’s backend systems failed to connect, causing widespread login and upload errors.
Q3. Was there any permanent data loss due to the outage?
No, there was no reported data loss. Services were restored once Amazon resolved the issue. However, the temporary downtime caused major service interruptions and financial losses for many businesses.
Q4. Is AWS now stable?
Yes. Amazon confirmed that all its systems are fully operational, and the platform has implemented additional safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
