AWS outages are announced in real time on the AWS Service Health Dashboard, which is the only source that tells you whether your region is affected and when service is expected to return

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) experiences an outage, the AWS Service Health Dashboard is where AWS posts updates. You do not need to call anyone or wait for an email — the dashboard shows the current status of every AWS service in every region, updated as the situation changes. If a service in your region is down, you will see a red or yellow indicator with a timestamp of when the issue started and what AWS knows about the cause.

The dashboard does not always give you a specific time when service will return. AWS typically posts what they know at the moment — "investigating", "identified", "working on mitigation" — rather than a predicted restart time. Once service begins to recover, they update the status to "recovering" and then "resolved". The entire timeline from first notice to resolution usually appears in the same incident report.

You can check the dashboard without logging into your AWS account. Go to status.aws.amazon.com in any browser. If you are already logged into AWS, you can also see a condensed version of the health status in the AWS Management Console under "Service Health Dashboard" in the top navigation.

Key Takeaways

  • The AWS Service Health Dashboard at status.aws.amazon.com is the official source for outage information and is updated in real time as AWS investigates and resolves issues.
  • AWS does not always predict a restart time; they post what they know about the cause and current status instead, and update as the situation changes.
  • You can filter the dashboard by region and service to see only the parts of AWS that matter to your work.
  • Personal notifications through email or SMS require you to set up AWS Health alerts in your account, which is separate from the public dashboard.
  • If the dashboard shows no outage but your service is still down, the problem is usually on your end — a misconfigured security group, an expired credential, or a service limit you have hit.

How to read the AWS Service Health Dashboard

The dashboard shows a list of all AWS services. Most of the time, every service shows a green checkmark and the word "Operational". When there is an outage, the affected service turns yellow (degraded performance) or red (service unavailable). Click on the service name to see the full incident report, which includes the time the issue started, what AWS has done so far, and any known workarounds.

The dashboard is organized by region — US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and so on. An outage in one region does not mean all regions are down. If you run workloads in multiple regions, check each one. You can also subscribe to notifications for specific regions and services so you get an alert the moment an outage begins, rather than discovering it when your users complain.

Incident reports stay on the dashboard for several days after resolution. This is useful if you need to document what happened for your own records or to understand why a backup or scheduled task failed at a particular time.

Setting up AWS Health alerts for your account

The public dashboard shows what is happening right now, but it does not send you a message. If you want AWS to notify you by email or through your phone when an outage starts, you need to set up AWS Health alerts inside your AWS account. This is different from the public dashboard and requires you to be logged in.

Go to the AWS Health Dashboard (not the Service Health Dashboard — these are two separate tools). In the left menu, choose "Event rules" and create a new rule. You can set it to trigger on "AWS Health events" and choose which services and regions matter to you. Then add an action — usually an SNS topic (straightforward Notification Service) that sends an email or SMS to your phone. Once this is set up, you will get a message within minutes of an outage starting in your region.

This setup is optional and takes about five minutes. Many teams skip it and straightforward check the dashboard when they notice something is wrong. Others set it up for critical services so they know about an outage before their customers do.

What to do while you wait for service to return

If AWS is down and you cannot reach your data or applications, you have limited options while the outage is ongoing. You cannot fix an AWS problem from your end — AWS has to fix it. What you can do is communicate with your users, check whether you have a backup in another region, and document the outage for your own records.

If you built your process to run in multiple AWS regions, you may be able to switch traffic to a region that is still up. This requires that you set this up ahead of time — you cannot improvise it during an outage. If you did not set up multi-region redundancy, now is a good time to plan for it, because AWS outages do happen and usually last between 30 minutes and a few hours.

If you have critical data in the affected region and no backup elsewhere, you will have to wait. AWS has strong incentives to restore service quickly, and most outages are resolved within a few hours. Once service returns, check that your applications started back up correctly — some services restart automatically, but others require manual intervention.

Why the dashboard sometimes shows no outage when your service is down

If you cannot reach your AWS service but the Service Health Dashboard shows everything is green, the problem is not an AWS outage. This happens often and is usually one of a few things: a security group rule that is blocking traffic, an IAM permission that expired or was removed, a service limit you have hit (like too many EC2 instances), or a misconfiguration in your process code.

Start by checking your security groups and network ACLs to make sure inbound traffic is allowed on the port you are using. Then verify that the IAM role or user running your process still has permission to access the service. If you recently scaled up or added new resources, check whether you have hit a service quota — AWS sets limits on how many of each resource you can create, and you may need to request an increase.

If none of that reveals the problem, check your process logs. AWS services usually return an error message that tells you what went wrong — "access denied", "quota exceeded", "invalid configuration" — rather than silently failing. The logs are usually in CloudWatch, which you can access from the AWS Management Console.

How often AWS experiences outages

AWS outages are not common, but they do happen. Most regions experience at least one outage per year that lasts long enough for customers to notice. Some outages affect only a single service in a single region and last less than an hour. Others affect multiple services across multiple regions and can last several hours. The largest outages make news; most do not.

AWS publishes a monthly summary of service events on their status page. You can review past incidents to see how often outages happen in your region and how long they typically last. This information is useful if you are deciding whether to build redundancy into your process — if your region has had three outages in the past year, each lasting 1 to 2 hours, you may want to set up failover to another region.

AWS also publishes a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for each service, which guarantees a certain percentage of uptime (usually 99.9% or higher). If an outage causes you to miss that may provide, you may be may have access to to a service credit — a small refund on your bill. You have to request this credit; AWS does not issue it automatically. The process is described in the SLA for each service.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if an outage is affecting only me or everyone?

Check the AWS Service Health Dashboard. If the service shows green and operational, the problem is on your end. If it shows yellow or red, AWS is investigating. You can also post in the AWS forums or check Twitter — if it is a widespread outage, other customers will be talking about it within minutes.

Can I get a refund if an AWS outage costs me money?

AWS offers service credits if an outage violates the SLA for that service. The credit is usually 10% to 30% of your bill for the affected service during the outage window. You have to request the credit by opening a support case — AWS does not issue it automatically. The amount depends on how long the outage lasted and which service was affected.

What should I tell my customers while AWS is down?

Tell them you are aware of the issue, that AWS is investigating, and that you are monitoring the situation. Do not guess at a restart time — link them to the AWS Service Health Dashboard so they can see updates as they happen. Once service returns, post a brief note explaining what happened and what you are doing to prevent it next time.

Does AWS notify me automatically when service comes back?

Only if you set up AWS Health alerts in your account. The public dashboard does not send notifications. If you have alerts configured, you will get an email or SMS when the incident is resolved. Otherwise, you have to check the dashboard yourself or wait for your process to start working again.