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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.
Statusfield brings reported Amazon CloudFront incidents into the same workspace as your other monitors. Select supported components and route relevant changes to your team. Vendor reports can lag an incident, so check your own application as well.
Follow Amazon CloudFront incidents with your team
Statusfield brings reported status for Amazon CloudFront together with your other critical tools. Choose the changes that should alert your team. Eligible new accounts can start a free trial — no credit card required.
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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 |
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.
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.
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.
Monitor CloudFront with Statusfield
Follow Amazon CloudFront incidents with your team
Follow reported incidents for Amazon CloudFront in Statusfield and send relevant updates to your configured channels. Eligible new accounts can start a free trial — no credit card required.
Try any paid plan for 30 days, no credit card required. Free trial for first-time customers.
Statusfield tracks Amazon CloudFront as part of AWS North America services. Choose supported components and route reported changes to your team. Add checks for your own endpoints to see whether they are responding as expected.
What to Do During a CloudFront Outage
Immediate (first 5 minutes)
- 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.
- Check by region — test your distribution from a machine in a different cloud region. Region-specific failures confirm a POP issue.
- Enable a static maintenance page — serve it from a non-CloudFront origin to give users a clear message instead of raw 502s.
- 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.
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.
Bring Amazon CloudFront updates to your team
Follow reported Amazon CloudFront status in Statusfield and choose which changes reach your configured alert destinations. Delivery depends on source updates, polling and successful processing. Check the catalog for supported components and the pricing page for channel availability.
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Follow Amazon CloudFront incidents with your team
Follow Amazon CloudFront and your other vendors in one Statusfield workspace. Select supported components and route the updates your team needs. Eligible new accounts can start a free trial — no credit card required.
Try any paid plan for 30 days, no credit card required. Free trial for first-time customers.
FAQ
Is Amazon CloudFront down right now?
This article is a troubleshooting guide, not a live outage verdict. Check the Statusfield catalog and the official vendor status page for the latest reported status, affected components and observation times. Compare those reports with what your own application is experiencing.
How can I get alerts about Amazon CloudFront incidents?
Follow reported Amazon CloudFront status in Statusfield and choose which changes reach your configured alert destinations. Delivery depends on source updates, polling and successful processing. Check the catalog for supported components and the pricing page for channel availability.
Does an operational Amazon CloudFront status mean my application is working?
No. A vendor status page describes reported service conditions. Your account, integration, network or application can still fail. Check your own public HTTPS endpoint and use logs or workflow tests to investigate the customer experience.
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