Is Amazon CloudFront Down? How to Tell and What to Do

Is Amazon CloudFront Down? How to Tell and What to Do

Amazon CloudFront is AWS's global CDN — it delivers static assets, API responses, and streaming content from edge locations close to your users. When CloudFront degrades, your JavaScript bundles don't load, image-heavy pages hang, and cached API responses go stale. Because CloudFront sits between your origin and your users, an outage often looks like your product is broken — not AWS.

The fastest way to know: Statusfield monitors Amazon CloudFront continuously and alerts you within minutes. Without monitoring, you find out about a CloudFront outage when users report broken pages or your error budget burns down.

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Common Signs of a CloudFront Outage

Symptom	What's likely happening
Static assets (JS, CSS, images) returning 502/503	Edge node is degraded or unreachable
ECONNRESET or connection timeouts on CDN URLs	CloudFront edge pod is dropping connections
Increased TTFB (Time to First Byte) on all pages	Edge cache is bypassing to origin under load
Lambda@Edge functions returning 5xx	Edge compute layer is degraded
Cache invalidations stuck or failing	CloudFront API is degraded
CloudFront distributions showing "In Progress" indefinitely	Control plane propagation is stalled
S3-backed CloudFront distribution returning 403/404	Signed URL or origin access policy may be affected

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How to Confirm It's CloudFront, Not Your Origin or Code

1. Test your origin directly

Bypass CloudFront by hitting your origin (S3 bucket URL or ALB endpoint) directly. If the origin responds normally but the CloudFront distribution fails, the issue is in CloudFront's edge layer.

2. Test from multiple regions

CloudFront outages are often scoped to specific Points of Presence (POPs). Use curl -o /dev/null -s -w "%{http_code} %{time_total}\n" against your distribution from multiple locations. Region-specific failures confirm a POP issue.

3. Check your CloudFront error metrics

AWS CloudWatch publishes 5xxErrorRate and 4xxErrorRate for CloudFront distributions. A step-change in error rate with no recent deployment in your change history points to a CloudFront issue, not your code.

4. Look for distribution propagation delays

Changes to CloudFront distributions (cache behaviors, SSL certs) propagate across 400+ edge locations. Prolonged "In Progress" status in the AWS Console during propagation is a known indicator of control-plane degradation.

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Recent Amazon CloudFront Outages

CloudFront has a pattern: symptoms appear at the CDN edge long before AWS acknowledges anything on the status page.

March 2, 2026 — A simultaneous degradation of CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator, Cloud WAN, and Route 53 affected CDN delivery across multiple regions. Static assets returned errors, Lambda@Edge functions timed out, and the AWS Management Console itself became unreachable. AWS acknowledged the incident approximately 20–30 minutes after edge-level symptoms were already visible to monitoring tools. Read the full incident breakdown: AWS CloudFront Outage — March 2, 2026.

2024 (multiple) — CloudFront experienced at least three distinct edge disruptions in 2024, each scoped to specific POPs in us-east-1 and eu-west-1. In each case, AWS marked the status page as "Investigating" for 15–45 minutes while customer-facing symptoms were already in full effect. Teams relying on the AWS status page alone missed the first half-hour of each incident.

The pattern is consistent: CloudFront outages often appear on the AWS status page 15–45 minutes after edge-level symptoms are already visible to external monitoring.

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How CloudFront Fits into the AWS Ecosystem

CloudFront is monitored on Statusfield as part of AWS North America infrastructure — but its edge layer is global. A "North America" status event can affect CloudFront POPs in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America, because CloudFront's 400+ edge locations share control-plane infrastructure regardless of where the originating event starts.

CloudFront integrates tightly with S3 (as an origin), ALB (for dynamic content), Lambda@Edge (for edge compute), WAF (for request filtering), and Shield (for DDoS protection). This means a CloudFront outage rarely stays contained — it cascades into failures across the services that depend on it. A degraded CloudFront distribution can simultaneously break your static assets, your API caching layer, your image optimization pipeline, and your bot protection.

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Monitor CloudFront with Statusfield

Statusfield tracks Amazon CloudFront as part of AWS North America services. When CloudFront degrades, you get alerted before your users notice broken pages. No manually checking dashboards — Statusfield watches it for you.

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What to Do During a CloudFront Outage

Immediate (first 5 minutes)

1. Confirm it's CloudFront, not your origin — hit your S3 bucket or ALB directly. If the origin responds but the CDN distribution fails, the issue is in CloudFront's edge.
2. Check by region — test your distribution from a machine in a different cloud region. Region-specific failures confirm a POP issue.
3. Enable a static maintenance page — serve it from a non-CloudFront origin to give users a clear message instead of raw 502s.
4. Pause cache invalidations — invalidation requests submitted during a control-plane degradation may stall indefinitely and won't help your users.

Communication (first 15 minutes)

• Post a status update proactively — even "we're investigating a CDN-layer issue" reduces support volume.
• For B2B products: reach out to high-value customers directly before they open tickets.
• Pin a message in your ops Slack or Discord with the current status and update in real time.

Recovery

• After CloudFront recovers, check that edge caches re-populated — the first wave of requests after recovery often bypasses cache and hits your origin.
• Verify Lambda@Edge functions are firing correctly — they occasionally require a manual deployment to reactivate after an edge-layer incident.
• Review any stalled cache invalidations submitted during the outage and resubmit them if needed.

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CloudFront Components and What Each Outage Looks Like

Component	Impact when degraded
Edge delivery (CDN)	JS/CSS/images fail or return 502/503; pages load partially
Lambda@Edge	Edge functions time out or return 5xx; request modification logic stops
CloudFront API (control plane)	Distribution changes stuck "In Progress"; invalidations stall
Origin Shield	Origin receives full request load; latency spikes across all regions
Signed URLs / Signed Cookies	Access-controlled content returns 403
CloudFront Functions	Viewer request/response logic stops executing

Edge delivery failures are highest-severity — they affect every user immediately. Control-plane failures are subtler but can block deployments and invalidations for hours.

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Monitor Amazon CloudFront Before the Next Outage Takes You Down

Statusfield monitors Amazon CloudFront and 5,000+ other services continuously. When something degrades, you get alerted — not after a user opens a support ticket about your site being broken.

Start monitoring free — no credit card required. View plans.

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FAQ

Is Amazon CloudFront down right now?

Statusfield monitors Amazon CloudFront continuously as part of AWS North America services. You get alerted the moment something degrades — not after a user reports broken pages.

Why are my CDN assets failing?

If your JS, CSS, or images are failing from CloudFront URLs but your origin responds normally, the issue is at the edge layer. Check Statusfield for current CloudFront status before spending time debugging your code.

How do I get alerted when CloudFront goes down?

Statusfield monitors Amazon CloudFront continuously and fires alerts the moment it detects a degradation. Start monitoring free — no credit card required.