AWS Secrets Manager Hidden Costs 2026
What they don't show you on the pricing page
AWS Secrets Manager costs Free to $0.40 per secret/month as of June 2026, with 2 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free Plan (free), and Per-Secret Pricing at $0.4/secret/month. Pricing depends on your chosen tier, contract length, and negotiated discounts.
Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.
- Free tier: Yes
AWS Secrets Manager offers 2 pricing tiers: Free Plan, Per-Secret Pricing. A free plan is available. Paid plans include Per-Secret Pricing at $0.4/user/month. The Per-Secret Pricing plan is all secrets management needs.
AWS Secrets Manager true cost runs 70% above the listed $0-$0.4/secret/month price as of June 2026. For a 25-person team, expect ~$204 in year-one costs vs the $120 base license. Key hidden costs: customer-managed kms keys cost $1.00/month per key (aws-managed keys are free), kms api calls cost $0.03 per 10,000 requests when using customer-managed keys, aws lambda costs for custom rotation functions (typically $0.000002 per rotation). Verified from 2 sources by CostBench.
Example: True Cost for 25 Users
| License (25 × $0.4 × 12) | $120/yr |
| Implementation (one-time) | +$15,000–$50,000 |
| Premium Support (20%) | +$24/yr |
| Training (25 × $500) | +$12,500 |
| Admin (part-time) | +$15,000–$25,000/yr |
| Estimated Year 1 Total | ~$204 |