Is Venmo still down? Live updates on widespread AWS outage

Looks like the popular peer-to-peer payment platform is back online

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Venmo, like the rest of the AWS-powered internet, was struggling today. Reports of a widespread outage began flooding DownDetector early Monday (October 20) morning as Venmo users ran into log-in errors, failed payments, and other issues with the popular peer-to-peer payment platform. It's been just one of hundreds of outages across internet services after Amazon Web Services went down and took out half the internet with it.

DownDetector reports about Venmo started ramping up around 9 a.m. ET, jumping from a few hundred to over 8,000 in an hour. By about 1 p.m., after Amazon pushed out one of several promised fixes over the course of the day, reports were hovering at around 5,000 before falling back down near zero within a few hours. Now it seems Venmo is back up and running fully, though I tested the app and it's still running a bit slow.

Venmo joined a long list of popular software that are having issues right now, from Canva and Fortnite to Amazon's own Alexa voice assistant. Tens of thousands of reports have flooded Downdetector since early Monday morning complaining of login problems, failed payments, buggy interfaces, and other service outages.

According to the AWS service health page, Amazon was looking into "increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services" in its Northern Virginia datacenters at 3:11 AM ET on Monday. By 5:01 AM, AWS had figured out that a DNS resolution issue with its DynamoDB API was the culprit. DynamoDB is a database that holds info for AWS clients, while DNS is the the equivalent of the internet's phone book for URLs and IP addresses. Amazon's engineers are working on fixes, but there's no official timeline for recovery yet.

We've been monitoring the AWS outages and will keep you posted as new information comes to light. If all these headaches have you wondering how Venmo compares to PayPal and other payment platforms, we've got you covered there as well.

Venmo outage — live updates

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Sorry, y'all

How to cancel a Venmo payment

(Image credit: Venmo)

Looks like the "Venmo is down" excuse won't fly much longer. The peer-to-peer payment service seems to be running back at 100% again on both mobile and desktop. We'll be the first to let you know if that changes, but we've likely reached the end of this sobering lesson on why relying on a few companies to power much of the internet is a bad idea. Now get to those IOUS.

Great news, folks!

Venmo outage reports on Down Detector around 4:48 pm ET on October 20, 2025

(Image credit: DownDetector)

Right around quitting time on the East Coast, the Venmo outage appears to be largely resolved, with less than 1,000 users reporting issues to Down Detector. That's a huge drop from the peak of around 8,300 this morning.

As AWS brings some order to the chaos, it looks like things are back up and running at Venmo at least. I was able to use the app normally (though it's still pretty slow) and the desktop version ran smoothly enough.

If anything changes, we'll let you know right here.

An update from Amazon

Close up of AWS sign at their offices in SOMA district

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Shortly after 4 p.m. ET, Amazon issued another update on the situation. "Service recovery across all AWS services continues to improve, " AWS Service Health page reads, noting that some customers may still face "intermittent functions errors."

We're seeing as much reflected on DownDetector as well, as reports across many of the affected services start to dip.

Can't use the Venmo app? Try desktop

A screenshot of a pop-up in the Venmo app that reads: Come back Soon - Venmo is currently encountering a disruption due to a cloud provider partner service issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to restore access as soon as possible.

(Image credit: Venmo)

I finally had some luck gettin the Venmo app to open, but that's just about all it can do. A pop-up comes up explaining that Venmo is down "due to a cloud provider partner service issue." If you exit it and try to use the app, it hits with you a failure to load error.

On desktop, everything seems to be working, it's just really slow.

When will Venmo be up and running again?

Woman feeling tried and stressed at work

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This is the second time this month Venmo has gone dark. On October 16, both Venmo and PayPal (which bought the service in 2013) went offline for about an hour caused by a "brief technical issue impacting users." But that issue was localized to the popular payment tool, whereas the AWS outage has taken out practically half the internet. We're guessing things will be back up and running in a few hours, but there's no way to tell at this point.

Issues holding steady

Outage reports for Venmo as of 2:26 p.m. ET

(Image credit: DownDetector)

Taking a quick gander at DownDetector shows Venmo outage reports are still hovering at around 5,000 as the clock strikes 2:30 p.m. ET. That's a step up from its peak of 8,300 this morning, but still not the most promising sign that Amazon services are indeed "recovering," as per the company's latest update.

Everything you need to know about how the AWS outage happened

Close up of aws (Amazon Web Services) logo sign on their office building in Houston, Texas, USA

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Millions of people are still struggling with busted apps and websites going dark as a result of an AWS outage we're tracking live. But answering just how AWS can break half the internet is a bit more complicated. Check out our explainer getting into the weeds about how the AWS outage happened, where we touch on the domino effect of cloud collapse and why DNS fails, the internet goes belly up.

Amazon says services are recovering (again)

Venmo, Amazon and AWS logos

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Amazon engineers are hard at work pushing out a patch, and Amazon's shared another hopeful update. A 1:38 p.m. ET update on the AWS health dashboard says its internal systems are "now showing signs of recovering in a few Availability Zones (AZs) in the US-EAST-1 Region." The issue seems to have originated from a system responsible for monitoring network load, and Amazon recently implemented additional measures to help that system recover. The company also noted it's working on restoring functionality to launch new instances of its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — virtual machines used to develop cloud-based applications — after temporarily limiting them to do damage control on the wider disruption.

"We are applying mitigations to the remaining AZs at which point we expect launch errors and network connectivity issues to subside," reads AWS' latest update. Of course, Amazon said as much earlier today too, so take it with a grain of salt.

A promising turn?

How to cancel a Venmo payment

(Image credit: Venmo)

Venmo and PayPal are used by thousands of individuals and businesses to send and receive money, so it being offline for any stretch of time is a serious headache. DownDetector reports look like they've started to taper off, down to just under 6,000 from a peak of 8,300 a few hours ago. Given the game of whack-a-mole Amazon has been playing all day to push out a fix, don't get too excited. We've already seen AWS outage reports slowly start to creep back up again.

Venmo is the latest domino

Outage reports for Venmo on October 20, 2025 around 12:43 p.m. ET.

(Image credit: DownDetector)

Venmo doesn't have an official status page, but a section for Venmo is listed on the main PayPal status page, and right now it's marked as "Service Disruption" though weirdly all the functions are still marked Operational.