AWS CloudFront Outage — March 2, 2026

Update: Multiple AWS services are experiencing partial outages as of this afternoon. Check live AWS status →

Amazon CloudFront is currently showing a Partial Outage alongside several other AWS services. Here's what's affected and what you can do right now.

What's Affected

As of March 2, 2026, the following AWS services are showing Partial Outage status:

• Amazon CloudFront — AWS's global CDN, serving static assets and accelerating dynamic content for millions of websites
• AWS Global Accelerator — Network layer service that routes traffic through AWS's global infrastructure
• AWS Cloud WAN — Wide area networking service for connecting global networks
• AWS Management Console — The web interface used to manage all AWS services

Amazon Route 53 (DNS) is also showing degraded performance.

Why CloudFront Going Down Is a Big Deal

CloudFront isn't just a "nice to have" — for most modern web stacks, it's load-bearing infrastructure:

• Static assets: Your CSS, JavaScript, and images are often served through CloudFront. If it's degraded, your site loads slowly or partially
• API acceleration: Many teams route API calls through CloudFront for edge caching and SSL termination
• Image optimization: Services like Imgix, Cloudinary, and AWS's own image optimization rely on CloudFront
• Third-party scripts: Analytics, chat widgets, A/B testing tools — many of these are delivered via CloudFront CDN endpoints

If your site is slow or partially broken right now and you can't figure out why, CloudFront may be the culprit — even if you don't use AWS directly.

What You Should Do Right Now

If you use CloudFront:

1. Check your CloudFront distribution's error rate in the AWS Console (if the console is accessible)
2. Look at your CDN-served assets — are images, JS, or CSS returning errors or timeouts?
3. Check your origin servers directly to confirm the issue is at the CDN layer, not your backend
4. If you have a fallback origin configured, consider temporarily routing traffic directly to your origin

If you use services that depend on CloudFront:

• Check the status page of any third-party tools that are misbehaving — they may be downstream of this outage
• Communicate proactively with your users if core functionality is degraded

If you use Route 53:

• DNS propagation may be slower than usual
• Avoid making DNS changes during an active incident — they may take longer to propagate or behave unexpectedly

What Is CloudFront?

Amazon CloudFront is AWS's content delivery network (CDN). It operates through a global network of edge locations — over 400 points of presence in 90+ cities across 48 countries. When a user requests content from a CloudFront-backed site, they're routed to the nearest edge location rather than the origin server, reducing latency and improving reliability.

When CloudFront experiences issues, it can affect:

• Page load times (CSS/JS/images served slowly or not at all)
• Video streaming services using CloudFront for media delivery
• API response times for services using CloudFront as a front-end proxy
• Software download sites using CloudFront for distribution

Never Be Surprised by an AWS Outage Again

Monitor AWS on Statusfield → and receive instant alerts the moment any AWS component changes status. We check every 5 minutes and notify you via email, Slack, or webhook — so you know before your users do.

---

Last updated: March 2, 2026. View live AWS status