Snapchat outage live — latest updates as social media app hit with widespread blackout

Still staying steady

Currently, Snapchat is still hanging out with around 10,000 reports on Down Detector. It spiked a little and then quickly leveled off. While some other services are starting to recover, Snapchat seems a little slower to be fixed.

How are you keeping yourself busy during the Snapchat outage?

With Snapchat being out of commission for this long, you've probably switched to one of the best Snapchat alternatives to keep the conversations with friends and loved ones going. So we want to know: which app are you using? Hit the poll above and sound off.

It's all fun and games...

Everyone has jokes. Almost every time there's a significant outage, someone goes viral with almost that exact post seen above. And you know what? I still chuckled.

How big is this AWS outage?

To give you a little perspective, this outage was huge, expanding far beyond Snapchat. According to a BBC report, Down Detector said it saw more than 6.5 million user reports across more than 1,000 companies.

Obviously, this draws some concern with how much of the internet relies on AWS. One outage taking down 1,000 companies isn't a good thing for anyway.

You thought it was over?

I have to admit, I'm right there with you in thinking the worst was behind. But suddenly, after taking a sharp downturn, the reports are on the rise again. Currently hovering at just over 10,000 Down Detector reports, it's looking like this outage isn't ready to let up anytime soon.

Hopefully, this second rise in reports is just a quick blip and the slow return of AWS gets Snapchat back into a properly working state so everyone can keep those precious streaks alive.

People are worried about their Snapchat Streaks

If the Snapchat outage lasts long enough, are people in danger of losing their Streaks? A few users have voiced concerns about this on X.com, and while I don't think it'll come to this, it's an interesting question to pose.

A Snapchat Streak is the same retention tactic you'll find in other apps. When two people Snap back and forth with each other at least once a day, every day, they're on a Streak. Once any user has kept it up long enough to start a Streak, they’ll see a fire emoji on the Chat screen.

If the problems with Snapchat persist beyond 24 hours then it's entirely likely a lot of Streaks will vanish. The app would then likely have to decide if it was able to put the Streaks back in place once normal service has resumed.

It's worth pointing this out because another app famous for its usage streaks, Duolingo, is also seeing major problems today as a result of the AWS outage.

A second spike??

Uh-oh, this doesn't look good. Just as I was ready to call it quits on today's outage, DownDetector is seeing a second spike for Snapchat-related problems.

Now, this could be because East Coast users are beginning to come online and are finding that teething problems with AWS are keeping them from using the app. Or it could be that there are more problems than we first thought and more issues are occurring.

From a dip of under 5,000 reports, DownDetector is now showing nearly 7,000 as we approach 8 a.m. ET / 1 p.m. BST. I'll keep monitoring the situation to bring you the latest updates.

"Fix your app"

I mentioned earlier that Snapchat's Twitter Support was copying and pasting the same message to affected users. It seems like things have improved somewhat with some more personalised responses asking users still experiencing problems to DM the support team.

But, bizarrely, the account still has a pinned message from June 12 at the top of its feed stating the issue has been fixed...

Users aren't pulling punches, either. X user Kimberlyy_2004 says bluntly: "fix your app everyone has the same C14A issue."

If Kimberlyy_2004 is reading this, there isn't a lot that Snapchat can do until the AWS issue is fully resolved and the backlog has been served. Apart from improve their Twitter communication, that is.

Snapchat is back up and running (for me, at least)

I've been checking my own Snapchat account throughout today's outage and, from the looks of things, everything is back to normal. I was able to load up the app, browse Snapchat Stories and the Snap Map as well as send messages.

It wasn't a flawless experience and load times did seem to be a bit more laggy than usual but the app was certainly usable.

All the sites and services affected by today's AWS outage

While the internet is slowly coming back online now, events like this reveal just how pivotal Amazon Web Services is to the functioning of the web. Snapchat may have been one of the biggest services, but it was far from the only massive brand to see a blackout this morning.

“When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu. Outages like this cause frustrated users, but also triggers a domino effect across payment flows," Monica Eaton, Founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and Fi911 commented. "Failed authorizations, duplicate charges, broken confirmation pages, all of that fuels a wave of disputes that merchants will be cleaning up for weeks. And once a customer files a dispute, you are already on the back foot.”

Here's a list of all the services affected:

• Amazon (including Alexa and Prime Video)
• Apple Music
• Blink
• Chime
• Coinbase
• Delta
• Duolingo
• Epic Games Store
• Fanduel
• Fortnite
• HBO Max
• Hinge
• Life 360
• Lyft
• McDonalds app
• Microsoft Teams
• My Fitness Pal
• Office 365
• PlayStation Network
• Pokemon Go
• Reddit
• Ring
• Roblox
• Roku
• Signal
• Slack
• Snapchat
• Square
• Starbucks
• Steam
• Strava
• Ubisoft Connect
• Venmo
• VR Chat
• Wordle
• Xbox
• Xero
• Zoom

• Read the full story: Amazon outage: All the apps and services affected by the AWS outage

Reports fall under 5,000 on DownDetector

In a further sign that things are returning to normal, reports on DownDetector have now fallen to under 5,000. This puts today's current outage at nearly three-and-a-half hours so far and, while there may be lingering problems for some, most users should start seeing regular service resume.

Snapchat hasn't posted anything directly itself, but Amazon Web Services has given the following update: "We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share."

Snapchat Support isn't really helping...

Anyone hoping for a serious answer from Snapchat itself about today's issues will probably need to lower their expectations. During the course of today's outage, frustrated users have reached out on X.com to ask the company for advice on why they aren't able to log into their account.

From the looks of things, the automated account is simply responding with the same cut and paste message to everyone: "Hi there! Thanks for letting us know. We’re always working to improve the Snapchat experience on both platforms. Please keep an eye on your device's app store for new updates! In the meantime, we'll share the info you provided with our team."

Amazon claims the outage has been fixed

Amazon has updated its AWS health status page to say the cause of the issue has been fixed and the remainder of the outage will be over as soon as it has processed the backlog of requests.

"We are seeing significant signs of recovery," the company wrote at 2.27 a.m. PT / 5.37 a.m. ET / 10.30 a.m. BST.

"Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information."

We tried Snapchat's upcoming smart glasses

This may be an appropriate time to tell you that, apart from letting you send pictures and messages to your friends, Snapchat is actually working pretty hard on the next evolution of its business. We can't really blame the company for today's outage — that's Amazon's fault — but it is a good opportunity to tell you about what we saw.

Last month, our Managing Editor, Computing, Jason England, got to try out the first significant consumer-friendly update in Snap OS 2.0 that will run on the upcoming consumer Snap Specs set to launch next year.

Snap is going to try and marry AR with AI in these new glasses, which come with dual Snapdragon processors, four cameras (two of them being infrared computer vision), stereo speakers and a six-microphone array. Want to know more about them? Check out Jason's full story right here.

• Read the full story: Snap OS is finally ready for Snap Specs in 2026 — I just tested the game-changing update

Reports are falling fast — is this a good sign?

Over the last hour, the reports of problems at Snapchat seem to be falling fast over at DownDetector. At the time of writing (5.30 a.m. ET / 10.30 a.m. BST) the reports have fallen below 10,000 from a peak of over 22,000.

Despite this, many millions of people will still be seeing issues and I'm still unable to log in to Snapchat myself here in London. Rather than a specific error code, my app is now just displaying the standard "Something went wrong. Please try again later" message.

Amazon is currently investigating the AWS issues so while things may be improving, we're definitely not out of the woods yet.

Elon Musk comments on today's outage

You can't have a global internet issue come up without some kind of input from Elon Musk. But the billionaire owner of X.com is being remarkably self-contained at the implosion of Snapchat this morning. He posted a tweet saying simply: "X works."

It might seem like he's being pithy but, since taking the reigns at X.com, Musk has indicated a need to move away from major public cloud providers like AWS. This isn't simply for robustness in the event of an outage like today. It's also do with cutting costs. X.com, like Snapchat and many other services, pay an eye-watering amount of money each year to utilize AWS.

Amazon investigating 'increased error rates and latencies'

Amazon has acknowledged the problems causing today's Snapchat outage on its AWS service-health page and says it is seeing "increased error rates and latencies".

The company says it has investigated the cause of the issue and believes it to be "related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1."

Amazon states: "We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues"

What are the most affected areas?

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the reports of problems are coming from cities where there are more users. The likes of Los Angeles and San Francisco are reporting major problems (despite the fact it's currently 2 a.m. PT at time of writing) but also New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Dallas. I'm writing to you from London in the U.K., which is also affected.

Amazon, meanwhile, has acknowledged problems affecting "multiple AWS services" particularly in the US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region, which is a central hub for a lot of its cloud customers.

Due to the structure of the web, even databases not located in that region can experience knock-on problems as whatever the issue is cascades down to related services.

How big is Snapchat?

Snapchat may not get mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, but it's still one of the largest social media platforms on the planet. The app launched back in 2011 and quickly became well-known for its disappearing snaps. A feature that was quickly copied by rivals.

Fast-forward to 2025 and it's added a huge number of new features, launched hardware in the form of Snapchat Spectacles and has hundreds of millions of active users around the world.

According to some of the latest stats I could find, Snapchat has around 932 million monthly active users (MAU) and 469 million daily active users (DAU) as of October 2025. That's a lot of people potentially affected by today's outage.

What other services are affected?

Snapchat is far from the only service experiencing problems today as a result of the AWS outage. As you can see from the graphic above, the likes of Roblox, Fortnite and Ring are also experiencing issues.

Payment platform Venmo, trading app Robinhood and streaming service Crunchyroll are also hit. Other victims include the McDonald's app for some users and the Lyft ridesharing service.

Today's problems highlight that while the internet is home to millions of different brands and services, a lot of the technical or discovery infrastructure rests with a few all-powerful companies. And when something goes wrong for them, it gets bad quickly.

C14A: Service unavailable

Trying to log into Snapchat this morning results in a C14A: Service unavailable error message which is internet speak for the app being unavailable to make a connection with its servers. Since Amazon Web Services is also experiencing a huge outage this morning, the two are clearly linked.

Snapchat service will likely resume as soon as Amazon is able to fix whatever its problem is.

A massive spike

The huge number of reports surfacing this morning on DownDetector shows the extent of this morning's problems. While the reports are falling now, at their peak around 3.50 a.m. ET / 8.50 a.m. BST, the reports were up at 22,762.