Snapchat experienced a major outage on October 20, 2025, caused by a widespread problem with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts much of Snapchat's infrastructure. The AWS issue originated in the US-EAST-1 region (Northern Virginia) and caused Snapchat users to be unable to log in, send messages, or access the app properly. The outage began in the early morning hours (around 3 a.m. ET) and peaked with over 22,000 reports of problems. Amazon quickly identified that the root cause was an internal network connectivity problem related to AWS's EC2 service and resolved the underlying issue. However, full recovery takes time due to propagation delays and backlog processing. By mid-morning on October 20, reports of Snapchat issues had decreased significantly, but some disruption persisted as the system worked through remaining requests. Experts expect Snapchat to be mostly restored later in the day on October 20, though minor lingering issues may continue until AWS completes all recovery processes. Users experiencing ongoing problems are advised to monitor Snapchat's official channels and try basic troubleshooting such as updating the app or restarting their device, but the main factor is AWS's recovery.
In summary, Snapchat's outage on October 20, 2025, was caused by a major AWS infrastructure failure, and the service is expected to be fixed gradually through the day, with most users regaining full access by later that day.
