Biggest outages of 2025 | ITWeb

In 2025, digital services proved both indispensable and fragile, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), PlayStation Network, Snapchat and Cloudflare leading the largest outages of the year.

This is according to a report compiled by research firm Ookla. Using Downdetector data from 2025 to analyse millions of user reports, Ookla has identified the largest website and service outages of the year, globally and per region.

Global outage data is based on total reports across all impacted services, while the regional outage figures are based on data for individual services.

According to the report, 2025 saw a combination of major outages across gaming, streaming, and social media services, but none were as impactful as the cloud services outages that affected companies across the globe.

The largest outages in the Middle East and Africa featured significant disruptions from key regional telecommunications providers alongside major global cloud and social media services.

“On 8 February telecommunications provider Du experienced a major disruption, recording 28 444 reports. Cloudflare ranked second, with the cloud service provider receiving 28 016 reports in MEA during the global outage on 18 November. Social media platformSnapchat registered 26 392 reports during a service disruption on 20 October,” notes Ookla.

This is followed by X (formerly Twitter), which received just over 25 000 reports on 3 October and YouTube which saw 23 000 reports on 15 October. AWS, Etisalat, Steam, Turk Telecom and PlayStation all received less than 20 000 reports in MEA, the report states.

The internet outage experienced by Du on 8 February stemmed from an internal network-related “technical issue” that the company’s teams moved swiftly to fix. The incident mainly disrupted home internet connections and certain mobile services for several hours on that Saturday afternoon.

In terms of the biggest outages of 2025 across the globe, the likes of AWS, PlayStation Network and YouTube led the pack.

These large-scale incidents underscored how failures in core infrastructure can ripple outward to millions of users. Here is a look at the largest global outages of 2025, according to Downdetector data.

The most significant outage of the year was linked to a breakdown at AWS, triggering more than 17 million reports on Downdetector across Amazon platforms and services that rely on them.

The disruption continued for over 15 hours and was attributed to an automated DNS management failure connected to DynamoDB in the US-EAST-1 region. As a result, several services were impacted, among them Snapchat, Netflix, and various e-commerce platforms.

• PlayStation Network (7 February)

The second-largest outage worldwide hit PlayStation Network, with more than 3.9 million reports recorded. The issue persisted for over 24 hours, blocking users from accessing online gaming features, including games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite. Downdetector’s attribution analysis showed the problem originated within PSN itself, without significant involvement from cloud providers or internet service providers.

Cloudflare experienced a worldwide outage that generated more than 3.3 million reports. The interruption lasted close to five hours and affected websites, applications, and APIs dependent on Cloudflare’s infrastructure, underscoring the global reliance on centralised cloud services.

The US and Canada experienced the highest concentration of high-impact outages, with the top three all surpassing over 1 million reports.

• PlayStation Network (7 February): Topped the chart with 1.6 million reports.
• YouTube (15 October): Recorded 1.5 million reports during its global streaming issue.
• AWS (20 October): The cloud outage drove 1.2 million reports to the status page.
• Snapchat (20 October): With almost 945 000 reports, the social media app was a major casualty of the AWS incident.
• Starlink (24 July): The satellite internet service saw a significant spike with 583 989 reports.
• Verizon (30 August): A major telecommunications disruption at Verizon registered 515 923 reports, highlighting the continued vulnerability of connectivity services.

Europe’s outages were a mix of gaming, social, and major telecommunications disruptions.

• PlayStation Network (7 February): The gaming platform’s global issue topped the EU list with 1.7 million reports.
• Snapchat (20 October): This social media service saw the second-highest outage activity in the region with 989 559 reports submitted by users.
• Vodafone (13 October): A UK-wide internet outage for this major telecommunications company generated 833 211 reports. The problem, attributed to a non-malicious software issue with a vendor partner, affected broadband, 4G, and 5G services.
• WhatsApp (28 February): The messaging platform caused significant disruption for its users with 621 763 reports.
• Spotify (16 April): The music streaming service’s outage recorded 468 334 reports, making it a major non-video streaming event.
• Odido (15 June): Within 10 days, the Netherlands telecommunications provider experienced two separate outages that totalled 357 685 reports (15 June) and 382 003 reports (25 June).

• X (Formerly Twitter) (10 March): X topped the list with 645 395 reports, demonstrating the service’s critical role in the region.
• Snapchat (20 October): The social media app had the second-largest outage, with 399 108 reports.
• YouTube (15 October): The global streaming issue that hit YouTube was felt acutely in the APAC region, registering 245 087 reports.
• AWS (20 October): The cloud service failure drove 175 380 reports, with another AWS-related incident on 15 April adding 106 667 reports.