Price checkMonthly
AWS Free TierFreePay-as-you-go (priced per service)Usage-based
See all 2 plans

All Amazon Web Services (AWS) Plans & Pricing

Prices unverified — last checked Aug 28, 2026

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
View all features by plan (compare side-by-side)

AWS Free Tier

  • Get free, hands-on experience with AWS products and services

Pay-as-you-go (priced per service)

  • AWS offers you a pay-as-you-go approach for pricing for the vast majority of our cloud services
  • With AWS you pay only for the individual services you need, for as long as you use them
  • See each Amazon Web Services service's own page for its rates
Pricing Alerts

Track Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing

Get an email when Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s pricing changes — plus the weekly SaaS Price Watch: verified price changes and deals across 3,000+ products. One-click unsubscribe.

Try Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free
Compare Amazon Web Services (AWS) with alternativesAdjust seats, lock a tier, add up to 2 more products side-by-side. Shareable URL.
Quick Answer
Last verified:
Medium confidence

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a free plan and usage-based paid plans as of November 2026, with 2 plans available. Plans: AWS Free Tier (free), and Pay-as-you-go (priced per service) (usage-based). The median contract is $398/year based on 164 community cost mentions.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: Yes

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers 2 pricing tiers: AWS Free Tier, Pay-as-you-go (priced per service). A free plan is available. Paid plans include Pay-as-you-go (priced per service) (usage-based). The Pay-as-you-go (priced per service) plan is production workloads.

Compared to other cloud infrastructure software, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.

  • Median contract: $398/yr from 164 purchases Thin data
  • 8 documented hidden costs beyond list price
Last verified: | Sources: 1 pricing pages and reviews

How much does Amazon Web Services (AWS) cost?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses usage-based pricing, with a free tier. Plans include AWS Free Tier (free), Pay-as-you-go (priced per service) (usage-based).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Overview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has 2 pricing plans: a free plan and usage-based paid plans. The AWS Free Tier plan is free and is best for evaluating the platform. The Pay-as-you-go (priced per service) plan is usage-based and is designed for production workloads.

The median Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer pays $398/year based on 164 community cost mentions.

There are at least 8 documented hidden costs beyond Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in August 28, 2026 from 1 independent source.

Try Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free

Support plans range from Basic (free) to Business Support+ (from $29/month), Enterprise Support (from $5,000/month), and Unified Operations (from $50,000/month). AWS lowered the Enterprise Support minimum from $15,000 to $5,000/month in 2026, and will retire the legacy Developer, Business, and Enterprise On-Ramp plans by early 2027.

For predictable 24/7 workloads, Savings Plans offer up to 72% off on-demand rates with 1- or 3-year commitments across EC2, Lambda, and Fargate. Actual monthly AWS spend varies enormously — from under $20 for a single dev instance to tens of thousands for production infrastructure — making the AWS Pricing Calculator essential for estimating real costs before deployment.

How Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Compares

Compare Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing against top alternatives in Cloud Infrastructure.

Amazon Bedrock View pricing → Amazon CloudFront View pricing → Amazon Q Developer View pricing →

Compare Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Alternatives

Before committing to Amazon Web Services (AWS), compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.

VSAmazon Bedrock
Custom

Priced as its own service

Compare pricing
VSAmazon CloudFront
Custom

Priced as its own service

Compare pricing
VSAmazon Q Developer
Custom

Priced as its own service

Compare pricing

All Amazon Web Services (AWS) alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The median Amazon Web Services (AWS) buyer pays $398/year based on 164 community cost mentions.

What companies actually pay $398/yr Median across 164 community cost mentions Thin data
Review scores
TrustRadius 7.6out of 10 (5)
Trustpilot 1out of 5 (25)
Third-party review aggregates, as of Jul 2026
Top pricing complaints
Unresponsive customer support with tickets going unassigned for weeksPhantom charges for deleted or auto-provisioned resourcesAI chatbots replacing human support with no escalation pathBilling disputes impossible to resolve
Source: Community cost mentions (Reddit, Hacker News) — aggregated from 164 distinct user reports. Indicative only — not contract-grade data.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cost by Company Size

Example costs for teams of different sizes. Each figure is labelled with the period it covers.

Small Kafka Cluster Storage (130TB, EBS st1, us-east) $5,850 per month

$5,850/month ($70,200/year)

Storage costs alone for a minimal 6-broker Kafka cluster requiring 130TB of provisioned EBS st1 HDD storage in us-east. Excludes compute, networking, and support costs.

3-AZ Open Source Kafka Cluster (Full Stack) $20,252 per month

$20,252/month

A production 3-AZ Kafka cluster with compute, storage, and inter-zone networking. Inter-zone networking fees alone total ~$14,765/month at 268 MiB/s traffic.

Reddit r/apachekafka community analysis (2024)

How Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Custom Custom
Microsoft Azure Custom Custom
Backblaze B2 $6.95/month $15/month
Cloudflare Pages + Workers Free $5/month
Cloudflare R2 (object storage) $0.01/GB-month $9/GB-month
Cloudways (managed cloud) Free $99/month

Detailed pricing comparisons:

Browse all Cloud Infrastructure pricing →

8 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has at least 8 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 8 hidden costs
  • Phantom Charges for Deleted/Unused Resources 5-25% of license costs
    critical 3 sources
    Trustpilot “They have been charging me for VPCs usage.I deleted those and then those were regenerated. Once I blocked all of them I got charged for Public IPs reserved. I deleted those and they keep charging me.”
    Trustpilot “They are forcing WAF into customers and force you to pay... YOU CAN'T REMOVE THE Distribution to prevent unwanted charges!”
    Trustpilot “Automatically started services I never requested, charged me for them, and the billing support ticket I lodged has sat for 65 days without even being assigned.”
  • Data Egress / Network Transfer Costs 10-30% of license costs
    high 2 sources
    Reddit “And I haven't even begun to mention the network costs, which can cost an extra $103,000 a year just in this miniscule 35MB/s example.”
    Reddit “An equivalent 3 AZ Open Source Kafka cluster would cost over $20,252/month, with the inter-zone networking fees alone costing almost five times as much as the total infrastructure costs for WarpStream ($14,765 vs. $2,961).”
  • EC2 T-Series Unlimited Mode Burst Credits $0.05/vCPU-hour above baseline
    high 1 source
    Reddit “Burst credits for t2 and t3 cost $0.05/vCPU-hour... t3.nano has a baseline cost of $0.0052/on-demand hour. If you max out its two vCPUs in unlimited mode, then you pay 0.0052 + 0.05 * 2 = $0.1052/hour. That's 5 times as expensive as paying for a t3.”
  • EBS Storage Costs for Data-Intensive Workloads $45/TB/month (EBS st1, us-east)
    high 1 source
    Reddit “`st1s` cost 0.045$ per GB of provisioned (not used) storage each month. That's $45 per TB per month... We will need to provision 130TB. That's: $188 a day, $5850 a month, $70,200 a year”
  • S3 Tables Premium Storage & Compaction Fees 15-37% above standard S3 costs
    medium 1 source
    Reddit “Storage Costs - these are 15% higher than Standard S3... Compaction - a completely new Tables-only cost, charged at both GiB-processed and object count. $0.004 per 1000 objects processed. $0.05 per GiB processed”
  • Savings Plans Complexity & Incorrect Charges 10-200% of instance costs
    high 1 source
    Trustpilot “their staff mentioned T-series instances are not covered by the saving plans. Yet, they charged, 200% of the instance cost (fixed hourly rental, not on demand, not by usage).”
  • Support Plan Costs $29-$5,000/month (source dated Jun 2026)
    high 2 sources
    Trustpilot “the billing support ticket I lodged has sat for 65 days without even being assigned. It's impossible to reach AWS (online chat times out, no phone number to call)”
    Trustpilot “HI ! Its been more than a week and my support case 178184788100483 is still not assigned nor fixed”
  • Lambda + API Gateway Hidden Overhead 5-20% of license costs
    medium 1 source
    Hacker News “If you use AWS Lambdas do implement something like an HTTP endpoint, you still need to pay for stuff like AWS KMS and API Gateway even if no client hits you with a request...”
Tip

Ask your Amazon Web Services (AWS) sales rep about these costs upfront. Getting them in writing before signing can save you from surprise charges later.

Full hidden costs breakdown →

Intelligence sourced from 4 independent sources
Trustpilot Consumer reviews Reddit User discussions Hacker News Tech community TrustRadius Enterprise reviews
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 26 source citations total.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Contract Terms

Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require advance notice. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Auto-Renewal No
Minimum Commitment None for On-Demand; 1 or 3 years for Savings Plans/Reserved Instances
Mid-Term Downgrade Allowed
Payment Terms Pay-as-you-go for On-Demand; upfront or monthly for Savings Plans
Price Escalation AWS has historically not increased existing service prices; new features and services may be priced higher. Community reports proxy price increases via new service charges (e.g., Lambda Init, S3 GET/PUT fees added over time)
Note

On-Demand pricing has no commitment; Savings Plans and Reserved Instances lock in term commitments with limited modification options

Based on 1 verified source

How to Negotiate Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts are negotiable. These 12 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.

Negotiation Playbook 12 tactics
Enterprise Volume Discount Negotiation high success

Large AWS customers with significant spend can negotiate substantial private pricing agreements. Reports indicate some customers receive discounts of up to 75% off listed prices. Engage your AWS Enterprise Account Manager with spend projections and multi-year commitments to unlock private pricing.

hn (2016-09-20)
Switch On-Demand to Reserved Instances high success

Committing to 1 or 3-year Reserved Instances for predictable baseline workloads provides significant savings over On-Demand pricing. Analyze your steady-state resource usage and convert those resources to Reserved Instances while keeping variable burst capacity on On-Demand.

hn (2023-02-28)
Use Savings Plans for Flexible Compute Savings high success

Savings Plans apply across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda usage with more flexibility than Reserved Instances. Committing to a dollar-per-hour spend rate qualifies for reduced pricing without locking to specific instance types.

AWS current tier data
Commit to Savings Plans high success

AWS Savings Plans offer significant discounts (typically 20-72%) compared to On-Demand pricing in exchange for 1 or 3-year hourly spend commitments. Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible, applying across EC2, Lambda, and Fargate regardless of instance family or region.

AWS published pricing
Use Reserved Instances for Steady-State Workloads high success

Reserved Instances provide deeper discounts than Savings Plans for specific EC2 instance types. Standard 3-year all-upfront RIs can yield up to 72% savings vs On-Demand. Best applied to predictable, always-on workloads where the instance type is unlikely to change.

AWS pricing documentation
Avoid Unlimited Mode on T-Series Instances high success

Disable 'unlimited' burst mode on t2/t3 instances unless you have verified the CPU burst patterns. Burst credits cost $0.05/vCPU-hour — at sustained burst usage, a t3.nano can cost 20x its baseline price. Switch to a fixed-performance instance type if sustained CPU is needed.

Reddit r/aws community (2025)
Minimize Cross-AZ Data Transfer high success

Inter-availability-zone data transfer is a major hidden cost. Architect applications to minimize cross-AZ traffic by co-locating services within the same AZ where possible, using VPC endpoints for AWS service traffic, and enabling fetch-from-follower for Kafka consumers.

Reddit community analysis (2025)
Present Competitive Alternatives to Unlock Discounts medium success

AWS negotiates more aggressively when customers present credible migration plans to GCP, Azure, or colocation. Gathering competitive quotes and demonstrating technical capability to migrate can unlock private pricing offers that are not publicly advertised.

hn (2016-09-20)
Evaluate GPU Workloads for Self-Hosting ROI medium success

For constant-use GPU workloads (ML inference, rendering), compare the payback period of self-hosting hardware against AWS on-demand GPU instance pricing. A credible self-hosting alternative can be a useful negotiation lever when discussing reserved GPU pricing with AWS.

hn (2023-02-28)
Scale to Zero with Lambda medium success

For intermittent workloads, Lambda can eliminate compute costs during idle periods. However, account for API Gateway, KMS, and re-execution costs that persist even at zero invocations, as noted by community users.

HN community discussion (2022)
Use S3 sc1 Instead of st1 for Throughput-Tolerant Workloads medium success

For data-intensive workloads, separate storage optimization from compute commitments. Use Free Tier for experiments, compare On-Demand — t3.micro and On-Demand — t3.medium for small servers, and evaluate Savings Plans only when usage is predictable enough to justify committed spend.

Reddit r/apachekafka community analysis (2024)
Leverage S3 Tiered Storage for Kafka medium success

Using Kafka's tiered storage with S3 can substantially reduce storage costs compared with keeping all data on EBS storage, which carries a much higher per-GB premium. Note: the Tiered Storage feature was still maturing as of late 2024.

Reddit r/apachekafka community analysis (2024)
High success Medium Low / difficult

Full negotiation guide →

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Price History

Pricing changes CostBench has tracked for Amazon Web Services (AWS), verified across 2 snapshots going back to 2026Q1.

  1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) price increase

    Highest tier increased from $15000 to $50000/month

    +233.3%

  2. Amazon Web Services (AWS) tier restructure

    Changed from 5 to 7 pricing tiers

  3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Enterprise Support decrease

    Enterprise Support tier decreased from $15000 to $5000/month

    -66.7%

Price decreased 67% over 0.4 years

View Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s full price history →

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing FAQ

01 What is included in the AWS Free Tier?

The AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro EC2 instances for 12 months, 5 GB S3 storage for 12 months, 750 hours of RDS db.t2.micro for 12 months, and always-free allocations including 1 million Lambda requests/month, 25 GB DynamoDB storage, and over 30 other services with monthly usage limits.

02 What AWS support plans are available in 2026?

AWS restructured its support plans in 2026. The current tiers are: Basic (free), Business Support+ (from $29/month), Enterprise Support (from $5,000/month), and Unified Operations (from $50,000/month). The legacy Developer, Business, and Enterprise On-Ramp plans are being phased out — Enterprise On-Ramp customers are being automatically upgraded to Enterprise Support during 2026, with full discontinuation by January 2027.

03 How can I save money on AWS?

The biggest lever is Savings Plans or Reserved Instances — committing to 1 or 3 years of usage cuts costs by up to 72% vs on-demand. Spot Instances save up to 90% for interruptible workloads. Beyond that: right-size instances regularly, use auto-scaling, delete idle resources (especially EBS volumes and Elastic IPs), and watch data egress costs, which are among the most common sources of bill shock on AWS.

04 What are the most common hidden costs on AWS?

Data transfer out is the top hidden cost — it can equal or exceed compute spend at scale. Other surprises include NAT Gateway charges (an hourly fee plus data processing), EBS storage for stopped instances, idle Elastic IP addresses, CloudWatch detailed monitoring, and per-VPC-endpoint fees. Lambda can also be expensive above the free tier if used for sustained HTTP workloads instead of EC2.

05 Does AWS charge for resources I thought I deleted?

Yes — multiple users report ongoing charges after deleting resources. Some services auto-regenerate resources (like VPCs and public IPs) or cannot be fully removed (like certain WAF distributions). AWS also sometimes auto-provisions services without explicit user action. If you see unexpected charges, audit your AWS Cost Explorer and check for orphaned Elastic IPs, unused load balancers, EBS snapshots, and WAF WebACLs.

06 What happens when my AWS Free Tier expires?

When the 12-month Free Tier period expires, AWS automatically begins billing at On-Demand rates. Users report being converted from free to paid accounts and charged without clear notification. Set up AWS Budgets alerts before your free tier year ends to avoid bill shock. The always-free tier (Free Tier plan, $0/month) provides limited perpetual free usage for some services like Lambda (1M requests/month), S3 (5GB), and DynamoDB (25GB).

07 Does AWS raise prices on existing services?

Historically, AWS has not raised prices on existing services — they have instead periodically reduced prices and added new lower-cost options. However, they do add new charges over time (S3 GET/PUT fees, Lambda Init charges) and new instance types may not offer pure price-per-performance improvements over older ones. The practical effect is proxy pricing increases through new mandatory service charges.

08 Is AWS storage actually more expensive than alternatives?

For high-volume data workloads, AWS storage can be more expensive than bare-metal alternatives, but the right comparison depends on redundancy, operations, and scaling requirements. Treat storage as a separate line item from compute tiers like Free Tier, On-Demand — t3.micro, and On-Demand — t3.medium, then compare against bare-metal pricing for the same durability and support needs.

Is this pricing incorrect? — we'll verify and update it.