AWS outage leads to estimated losses of $75 million per hour

AWS outage disrupted major platforms, causing an estimated $75 million in hourly losses

Large sections of the internet experienced widespread disruption following an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20, 2025, causing downtime for several major platforms including Fortnite, Roblox, and Reddit.

The issue was reportedly linked to a DNS configuration error that temporarily affected a range of cloud-based services across multiple industries.

Service restoration began later that day, with most systems returning to normal operations within hours. Analysts and monitoring firms described the event as a reminder of the internet’s interdependence on a few major cloud providers.

According to Catchpoint CEO Mehdi Daoudi, the incident underscored how reliant modern work and commerce are on uninterrupted internet infrastructure.

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What caused the AWS widespread outage?

Data from UI design agency Tenscope estimates that Amazon may have lost approximately $72.8 million per hour during the outage, while other major platforms, including Snapchat, Zoom, and Roblox, collectively accounted for around $75 million per hour in losses across eight companies.

For comparison, delivery firm ParcelHero cited the $5.4 billion loss incurred by Fortune 500 companies during the previous CrowdStrike outage as an indicator of how severe such large-scale disruptions can be.

AWS, which holds roughly 30% of the global cloud market, supports a significant portion of online activity, including e-commerce, gaming, and communication platforms.

As systems recovered later on October 20, many companies reported resumed operations, though the outage highlighted the broader challenges of ensuring stability in large-scale cloud environments.