Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant failure on Monday morning (20), disrupting hundreds of digital services worldwide, including in Brazil. The cloud infrastructure issue affected over 500 companies, such as Snapchat, Zoom, Fortnite, and Roblox, leaving millions of users without access to apps and platforms. AWS technicians are working to restore systems, and the company reported signs of recovery. The outage highlighted the global reliance on cloud services.
The failure, which began around 4 a.m. (Brasília time), impacted social media, payment platforms like PayPal and Coinbase, and more. AWS is a leading provider of cloud computing, offering storage and processing for businesses and governments.
- Affected services include Prime Video, Perplexity, and Lyft.
- Games like Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were also offline.
- The outage disrupted operations for education platforms like Duolingo.
Scale of the issue
The disruption was felt across multiple countries, with reports of difficulties accessing videoconferencing, streaming, and gaming apps. AWS confirmed the failure affected servers in several regions, with major impacts in North America and Europe.
Companies relying on AWS infrastructure faced partial or total shutdowns, causing inconvenience for users and uncalculated financial losses.
Amazon’s response
AWS reported identifying the issue’s source and is working on a full server fix. By 7 a.m., the company noted gradual improvements in the network.
The company emphasized that restoring all services as quickly as possible is the priority, without providing exact timelines for normalization.
Cloud dependency
The AWS outage exposed the vulnerability of companies using cloud computing services. Unlike local failures, disruptions in providers like AWS affect multiple sectors simultaneously.
AWS competes with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure but leads the market with about 32% global share, according to recent industry data.
Experts highlight that the growing digitization of services makes investing in redundancies and alternative systems essential to minimize outage impacts.
Comparison with past incidents
This is AWS’s largest outage since 2021, when a similar failure disrupted services like Netflix and Disney+. The incident also recalls the 2024 CrowdStrike outage, which affected hospitals and banks globally.
Amazon has not yet disclosed technical details about the current failure’s cause, but investigations are ongoing.
User impact
Millions of users reported difficulties accessing essential apps, from work tools to entertainment.
- Small businesses using AWS faced disruptions in their online operations.
- Roblox users reported losing game progress.
- Payment platforms like Coinbase temporarily suspended transactions.
AWS advised clients to monitor updates on its official channels.
Next steps
AWS continues to monitor servers and promised regular updates on recovery. Affected companies have started resuming operations, but some still report instability.
Full normalization is expected throughout the day, depending on the complexity of the fixes.
