A major disruption affected the website and mobile app of Amazon on Thursday, March 5, 2026, leaving thousands of users unable to shop or access their accounts for several hours. The outage began around 2:00 p.m Eastern time and triggered a surge of complaints from customers across the United States. Many users reported problems while trying to complete purchases, view product prices, or check their order history.
According to order reports, checkout failures were the most common issue during the disruption. Others said the mobile app repeatedly crashed, while some encountered errors when opening the product pages. The widespread problems made it difficult for customers to browse items or finish transactions, causing frustration during the several-hour outage.
Amazon later confirmed that the incident was caused by a software code deployment glitch rather than a failure in its cloud infrastructure. The company worked to fix the problem throughout the afternoon and evening, eventually restoring normal service by about 8.00 p.m E.T.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson apologised to customers and said the issue had been fully resolved. The company explained that the disruption was linked to a recent software code deployment and confirmed that both the website and the mobile app are now running smoothly again.
Cascading Failures Hit Secondary Services and Apps
The outage also affected several services connected to Amazon beyond its main online shopping platform. During this disruption, users reported issues with Amazon Fresh, the company’s grocery delivery service. Many customers said they were unable to place grocery orders or view their previous purchase history while the problem was ongoing.
Some users also experienced minor disruptions with Prime Video and the Kindle Store. According to the outage-tracking platform Downdetector. These services showed a smaller number of error reports compared with the main Amazon website and mobile app.
However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed that its broader global infrastructure continued operating normally throughout the retail incident, unaffected by the software glitch. This suggested that the problem was linked to Amazon’s retail systems rather than its broader cloud infrastructure.
At the height of the outage, more than 22,000 users reported issues on Downdetector. As Amazon worked to fix the problem, the number of complaints steadily declined, dropping to fewer than 650 reports by late evening.
The disruption comes months after a major global AWS outage in October 2025, which had already raised concerns about the reliability and resilience of Amazon’s digital services.
Conflict in the Middle East: AWS Data Centers Targeted
The retail outage also comes at a time when Amazon is facing broader infrastructure challenges in the Middle East. Earlier this week, drone strikes linked to regional conflict reportedly damaged data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, causing disruptions to some services run by Amazon Web Services in the region.
While Iranian state media characterized the strikes as a targeted response to Amazon’s alleged support for US intelligence operations, independent security analysts and regional officials have noted that the facilities were caught in a broader wave of strikes affecting multiple infrastructure sites across the Gulf. Amazon has not commented on the specific political claims, focusing instead on the safety of its personnel and the physical recovery of the affected availability zones.
Following the incident, Amazon advised customers in the affected regions to move their workloads to other available AWS regions to avoid further service interruptions. The company worked to ensure that cloud users could continue operating while repairs and recovery efforts were underway.
Despite the timing of these events, Amazon said the March 5 outage affecting its website and mobile app in the United States was not related to the drone strikes. The company emphasised that the description was caused by an internal software deployment issue and not by any physical damage to the infrastructure.
