Price checkMonthly
Free TierFreeOn-Demand (t3.micro)$7.59/moOn-Demand (t3.medium)$30.37/mo
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) costs Free to $10K per month as of March 2026, with 5 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free Tier (free), On-Demand (t3.micro) at $7.59/month, On-Demand (t3.medium) at $30.37/month, and Enterprise Support at $15000/month. Enterprise pricing is available on request. 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

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers 5 pricing tiers: Free Tier, On-Demand (t3.micro), On-Demand (t3.medium), Savings Plans (1-Year Compute), Enterprise Support. A free plan is available. Paid plans include On-Demand (t3.micro) at $7.59/month, On-Demand (t3.medium) at $30.37/month, Enterprise Support at $15000/month. The On-Demand (t3.micro) plan is small workloads, development servers, and microservices.

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

  • Median contract: $364/yr from 0 purchases
  • 7 documented hidden costs beyond list price
Last verified: | Sources: 3 pricing pages and reviews

How much does Amazon Web Services (AWS) cost?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers 5 pricing plans, starting with a free tier and scaling to custom enterprise pricing. Plans include Free Tier (free), On-Demand (t3.micro) at $7.59/month, On-Demand (t3.medium) at $30.37/month, Savings Plans (1-Year Compute) (custom pricing), Enterprise Support at $15000/month.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Overview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has 5 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $10,000/month. The Free Tier plan is free and is best for developers learning aws, small experiments, and proof-of-concept projects. The On-Demand (t3.micro) plan costs $7.59/month, best for small workloads, development servers, and microservices. The On-Demand (t3.medium) plan costs $30.37/month, best for small production applications, web servers, and staging environments. The Savings Plans (1-Year Compute) plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote and is designed for predictable production workloads running 24/7 with committed usage. The Enterprise Support plan costs $15,000/month, best for large enterprises running mission-critical workloads on aws.

The median Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer pays $364/year.

There are at least 7 documented hidden costs beyond Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in January 28, 2026 from 3 independent sources.

Visit Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's largest cloud infrastructure provider, commanding roughly 31% of the global cloud market. AWS offers over 200 fully-featured services spanning compute, storage, databases, networking, machine learning, and more. Its EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) service is the backbone of cloud computing, providing resizable virtual machines with per-second billing.

AWS pricing follows a pay-as-you-go model with no upfront commitments. A basic t3.micro instance starts at $7.59/month, while production workloads typically range $100-$5,000/month. Savings Plans and Reserved Instances offer up to 72% off On-Demand pricing for committed usage. In January 2026, AWS raised EC2 Capacity Block prices for ML workloads by 15%, though standard On-Demand and Savings Plan rates remain unchanged.

How Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Compares

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

Microsoft Azure $1.0-$12.0/user/mo View pricing → DigitalOcean $4-$200/user/mo View pricing → Google Cloud Platform (GCP) $300.0-$999.0/user/mo View pricing →

All Amazon Web Services (AWS) Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
Free Tier Free Free Developers learning AWS, small experiments, and proof-of-concept projects
On-Demand (t3.micro) $7.59 /month $7.59 /year Small workloads, development servers, and microservices
On-Demand (t3.medium) $30.37 /month $30.37 /year Small production applications, web servers, and staging environments
Savings Plans (1-Year Compute) Contact Sales Contact Sales Predictable production workloads running 24/7 with committed usage
Enterprise Support $15000 /month $15000 /year Large enterprises running mission-critical workloads on AWS
View all features by plan

Free Tier

  • 750 hours/month t2.micro or t3.micro EC2 instance
  • 5 GB Amazon S3 standard storage
  • 750 hours Amazon RDS (db.t2.micro)
  • 1 million AWS Lambda requests/month
  • 25 GB DynamoDB storage
  • 1 GB CloudFront data transfer/month
  • Available for 12 months after signup
  • Some services always free (Lambda, DynamoDB)

On-Demand (t3.micro)

  • 2 vCPUs, 1 GiB memory
  • Up to 5 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Pay-per-second billing (60s minimum)
  • No upfront commitment required
  • Elastic IP address available
  • Burstable CPU performance
  • Multiple OS options (Linux, Windows)

On-Demand (t3.medium)

  • 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB memory
  • Up to 5 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Pay-per-second billing
  • Burstable performance with CPU credits
  • EBS-optimized by default
  • Multiple storage options (EBS, Instance Store)
  • Auto Scaling compatible

Savings Plans (1-Year Compute)

  • Up to 72% savings vs On-Demand
  • Applies to EC2, Lambda, and Fargate
  • Flexible across instance families and regions
  • 1-year or 3-year commitment options
  • All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront payment
  • Automatic application to qualifying usage
  • Compute or EC2 Instance plan types available

Enterprise Support

  • Dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM)
  • 15-minute response for critical issues
  • Infrastructure Event Management
  • Well-Architected Reviews
  • Operations Reviews
  • Training and certification credits
  • Trusted Advisor with full checks
  • Third-party software support
See Amazon Web Services (AWS) Plans & Sign Up

Compare Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Alternatives

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

VSMicrosoft Azure
From $1.0/user/mo

Developers and startups exploring Azure or building initial prototypes

Compare pricing
VSDigitalOcean
From $4/user/mo

Evaluating DigitalOcean services

Compare pricing
VSGoogle Cloud Platform (GCP)
From $300.0/user/mo

Developers exploring GCP, data analytics experimentation, and serverless prototyping

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 $364/year based on 0 verified purchase transactions.

What companies actually pay $364/yr Median across 0 purchases
Review scores
TrustRadius 7.6/10 (735)
Top pricing complaints
Customer support described as 'terrible' with 24-hour outages and no resolutionLogin and account access becomes impossible when key technical personnel leaveBilling structure is complex and difficult to predictWeb console UI is inconsistent and counterintuitive across services
Source: Vendr buyer database — median calculated from 0 real purchase transactions. Savings figure reflects negotiated discounts reported by buyers.
Visit Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Year 1 Total Cost by Company Size

Real deployment costs including licenses, implementation, training, and admin — not just the sticker price.

Developer Sandbox $15 Year 1 total

Single t3.micro instance with 20 GB EBS, S3 bucket, and basic monitoring

Small Web Application $150 Year 1 total

2x t3.medium instances behind an ALB, RDS db.t3.micro, 50 GB S3, Route 53

Production SaaS Platform $1,500 Year 1 total

Auto-scaling group of m5.large instances, RDS Multi-AZ, ElastiCache, CloudFront CDN

Enterprise Infrastructure $10,000 Year 1 total

Multi-region deployment with dedicated instances, EKS, multiple RDS clusters, and enterprise support

Cloud VR/Gaming PC (GPU Instance, Pay-Per-Use) $0 Year 1 total

Running AWS g4dn or g5 GPU instances for cloud gaming or VR streaming on an on-demand pay-per-hour basis. No lock-in; cost scales with hours played.

A100 GPU Instance — Small Config (ML Inference) At least $3/hour, practically $6+/hour all-in Year 1 total

Running an A100 GPU instance with 32GB RAM and 8 vCPUs for machine learning inference. Practical all-in cost often doubles the base rate due to AWS pricing model.

Multi-Container App on Fargate (3 Containers) At least $7 per container per month Year 1 total

Deploying a multi-container application with stateless HTTP services and background jobs using ECS + Fargate instead of self-managed EC2.

Multi-Container App on EC2 via Elastic Beanstalk $5 Year 1 total

Running all containers for a multi-service application on a single EC2 instance via Elastic Beanstalk as a cost-effective alternative to Fargate.

How Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free $10000/month
Microsoft Azure $1/month $12/month
DigitalOcean $4/month $200/month
Fly.io Custom Custom
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) $300/month $999/month
Linode (Akamai) Free $992/month

Browse all Cloud Infrastructure pricing →

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

Beyond the listed price, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has at least 7 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 7 hidden costs
  • Data Egress and Bandwidth Costs 10-30% of license costs
    high 2 sources
    Hacker News "AWS bandwidth pricing is 5x-50x higher than the providers I usually use. E.g. for the cost of 1TB of transfer at AWS you can rent a server for a month + multiple TB of transfer elsewhere."
    Hacker News "the all too common story of "sticker shock" from clouds on bandwidth alone that cloud has ridiculous markups on"
  • Lambda Hidden Service Dependencies 5-15% 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."
    Hacker News "Above free tier AWS Lambdas are terribly expensive when compared with EC2 alone. You're charged per RAM*time, you're charged per concurrent execution, and if your Lambda times out you have to pay for the re-execution."
  • GPU and ML Instance Cost Shock $2,160-$14,400
    high 1 source
    Hacker News "retail on-demand instance A100 pricing is at least $3/hr which practically speaking with the AWS pricing model is can be twice that all-in. This is for an instance with 32GB of RAM and 8 VCPUs - which for a lot of A100 use cases is useless."
  • Managed Service Premium (Fargate, Aurora, Redshift) $21-$100
    high 2 sources
    Hacker News "Does AWS have high-margin prices? In aggregate, somewhat, but this is mostly driven by the big ticket managed enterprise items: Aurora, Redshift, Quicksight, probably Fargate, etc."
    Reddit "ECS + Fargate seems like it's designed for this kind of thing, but it's crazy expensive (at least $7 per container vs running all three of them on one $5 EC2 with EB)"
  • VPC Endpoint Charges per Service 5-15% of license costs
    medium 1 source
    Reddit "you cannot set up an endpoint that applies to all AWS services, you can only do one endpoint per service and I had to do a lot of digging trying to figure out exactly all the services that the provisioner was using and add endpoints for each one o..."
    Reddit "doing this in GCP is free whereas in AWS you have to pay for each endpoint"
  • Engineering Complexity and Staffing Overhead 10-20% of license costs
    high 3 sources
    Hacker News "That's why you may want to hire consultants for it: People who understand it better than you do, and will be able to assist you in reducing your costs."
    Reddit "A task that may take you a day or less to do in GCP, you may spend a week to do the same thing in AWS."
    TrustRadius "In my opinion, Amazon Web Services is not suited for non-technical users and rapidly changing startup."
  • Support Plan Costs for Production Workloads $15,000/month
    high 2 sources
    Reddit "Basic: no technical support. Developer: business hours access via email. Business: < 1-hour response for production system failure. Enterprise: < 1-hour response for production system failure, more expensive."
    TrustRadius "Amazon Web Services has been down for us for 24 hours Login Billing Notifications Customer Support - in our experience, terrible."
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
Hacker News Tech community Reddit User discussions TrustRadius Enterprise reviews Vendr Verified buyer transactions
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 23 source citations total.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Contract Terms

Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require On-Demand instances can be stopped or terminated at any time with no notice; Reserved Instances commit to 1 or 3-year terms. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Auto-Renewal No
Cancellation Notice On-Demand instances can be stopped or terminated at any time with no notice; Reserved Instances commit to 1 or 3-year terms
Minimum Commitment None for On-Demand; 1 or 3 years for Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
Mid-Term Downgrade Allowed
Payment Terms Pay-as-you-go for On-Demand; upfront, partial upfront, or no upfront options available for Reserved Instances
Price Escalation No published price escalation schedule; AWS has historically reduced prices over time, though GPU, ML, and managed service pricing remains high
Note

On-Demand workloads can be scaled down or terminated immediately; Reserved Instance commitments are fixed for the term but unused capacity can be listed on the Reserved Instance Marketplace

Based on 2 verified sources

How to Negotiate Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) contracts are negotiable. These 6 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.

Negotiation Playbook 6 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

AWS Savings Plans (including the 1-Year Compute plan listed in AWS pricing) 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
Replace Fargate with EC2-Backed Containers high success

For multi-container applications, running containers on EC2 instances via Elastic Beanstalk can dramatically reduce costs compared to Fargate. Community reports indicate Fargate costs at least $7 per container versus running all containers on a single $5 EC2 instance.

reddit (r/aws, 2023-07-03)
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), self-hosting hardware may have a payback period of under 6 months compared to AWS on-demand A100 pricing of $3-$20/hr. Use this as a credible negotiation lever when discussing reserved GPU pricing with AWS.

hn (2023-02-28)
High success Medium Low / difficult

Full negotiation guide →

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing FAQ

01 How much does AWS cost?

AWS uses pay-as-you-go pricing with no upfront commitments. A basic t3.micro instance costs about $7.59/month, a t3.medium costs $30.37/month, and production workloads typically range from $100-$5,000+/month. Free Tier includes 750 hours of t2/t3.micro instances for the first 12 months.

02 Does AWS have a free tier?

Yes, the AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro EC2 instances, 5 GB S3 storage, 750 hours RDS, and 1 million Lambda requests per month. Most services are free for 12 months after signup, while some (like Lambda and DynamoDB) have always-free tiers.

03 What hidden costs should I expect with AWS?

Common hidden costs include data transfer out ($0.09/GB), NAT Gateway fees ($0.045/hour + data), EBS storage ($0.08/GB/month), Elastic IP charges for idle addresses, CloudWatch monitoring, and cross-region transfer. Data egress is often the largest surprise cost.

04 How can I save money on AWS?

Use Savings Plans or Reserved Instances for up to 72% off On-Demand. Spot Instances save up to 90% for interruptible workloads. Right-size instances, use auto-scaling, delete unused resources, and leverage the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate costs before deployment.

05 AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Which is cheapest?

Pricing is comparable across hyperscalers for similar instance types. AWS t3.micro costs $7.59/month, Azure B1s costs $7.59/month, and GCP e2-micro costs $6.12/month. GCP offers automatic sustained-use discounts, Azure has Hybrid Benefit for Windows, and AWS has the broadest Savings Plans coverage.

06 How does AWS billing work?

AWS bills per-second for most compute services (60-second minimum) and monthly for storage and data transfer. Bills are generated monthly. You can set billing alerts, use AWS Budgets for forecasting, and leverage Cost Explorer to analyze spending patterns.

07 How does AWS On-Demand pricing compare to Reserved Instances?

On-Demand pricing (e.g., $7.59/month for a t3.micro, $30.37/month for a t3.medium) requires no commitment but is the most expensive option. Reserved Instances require a 1 or 3-year commitment but provide substantial savings for predictable workloads. AWS Savings Plans offer a flexible middle ground. For very high constant usage, multiple HN contributors note that self-hosting or colocation can be more cost-effective than even reserved instance pricing over a 1-3 year period.

08 Is AWS pricing transparent?

AWS publishes its pricing publicly, which is noted as an advantage over many enterprise competitors. However, the pricing model is widely considered complex and difficult to predict. Different services are priced differently by region, instance type, and usage pattern. Users report needing to actively study AWS billing systems as part of application design to avoid runaway costs. One HN commenter noted that pricing complexity is a feature of the platform, not a bug, and may necessitate hiring consultants.

09 What are the hidden costs of using AWS Lambda at scale?

Lambda charges per RAM×time, per concurrent execution, and re-bills for re-executions after timeouts. Implementing Lambda-based HTTP endpoints also requires paying for AWS KMS and API Gateway even when zero requests are processed. Above the free tier, Lambda can be more expensive than equivalent EC2 instances for sustained workloads.

10 What level of technical expertise does AWS require to manage cost-effectively?

AWS is not well-suited for non-technical users. Effective cost management requires understanding instance types, reserved pricing, billing dimensions, and architectural patterns. TrustRadius reviewers note that even basic account access can become impossible for non-technical staff when key personnel (like a CTO) depart. Many organizations hire dedicated DevOps/platform engineers or external AWS consultants specifically to manage and optimize cloud spend.

11 How does AWS Enterprise Support work and what does it cost?

AWS Enterprise Support starts at $15,000/month. Lower tiers include: Basic (no technical support), Developer (business hours email access), and Business (under 1-hour response for production system failures). Enterprise adds dedicated technical account management and the fastest guaranteed response times. Despite the premium, at least one TrustRadius reviewer described AWS customer support as 'terrible' with 24-hour unresolved outages.

12 Can large AWS customers negotiate discounts off listed prices?

Yes. Large AWS customers can negotiate significant private pricing agreements through their Enterprise Account Manager. One HN commenter noted knowing of an AWS customer with approximately 75% discount off listed prices. Negotiating leverage increases with projected spend volume and when credible competitive alternatives (GCP, Azure, colocation) are presented.

Is this pricing incorrect? — we verify and update within 24 hours.