Price checkPer varies
Free TierFreeOn-Demand - Standard Table Class$0.625/varies/moOn-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class$0.78/varies/mo
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All Amazon DynamoDB Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
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Free Tier

  • 25 WCUs
  • 25 RCUs
  • 25 rWCUs for global tables across two AWS Regions
  • 25 GB data storage
  • 2.5 million DynamoDB Streams read requests
  • 1 GB data transfer out

On-Demand - Standard Table Class

  • $0.625 per million WRUs
  • $0.125 per million RRUs
  • $0.625 per million replicated write request units
  • $0.25 per GB-month storage

On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class

  • $0.78 per million WRUs
  • $0.155 per million RRUs
  • $0.78 per million replicated write request units
  • $0.10 per GB-month storage
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Tier
Billing
Your projected cost$15.625per month · $0.625/seat × 25 seats
Year 1 license$187.512 months at this rate
At a glance

List price by tier (annualized, per seat)

Per-seat list price across Amazon DynamoDB's plans, annualized. Custom-priced tiers show a hatched bar.

Free TierCustom
On-Demand - Standard Table Class$7.5/yr
On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class$9.36/yr
Real-world benchmark

Buyers actually pay a median of $25/yr for Amazon DynamoDB contracts (Vendr deal flow, n=4). That's a contract total — the more seats, the more leverage to negotiate down.

Quick Answer
Last verified:
Estimate

Amazon DynamoDB costs Free to $0.78 per varies as of June 2026, with 3 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free Tier (free), On-Demand - Standard Table Class at $0.625/varies, and On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class at $0.78/varies. The median contract is $25/year based on 4 verified purchases.

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

  • Free tier: Yes

Amazon DynamoDB offers 3 pricing tiers: Free Tier, On-Demand - Standard Table Class, On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class. A free plan is available. Paid plans include On-Demand - Standard Table Class at $0.625/per million write request units; reads $0.125 per million RRUs; storage $0.25 per GB-month, On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class at $0.78/per million write request units; reads $0.155 per million RRUs; storage $0.10 per GB-month. The On-Demand - Standard Table Class plan is most serverless dynamodb workloads with variable or unpredictable traffic.

Compared to other database as a service software, Amazon DynamoDB is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.

  • Median contract: $25/yr from 4 purchases
  • 8 documented hidden costs beyond list price
Last verified: | Sources: 1 pricing pages and reviews

How much does Amazon DynamoDB cost?

Amazon DynamoDB offers a free plan with 2 paid tiers from $0.63 to $0.78/varies. Plans include Free Tier (free), On-Demand - Standard Table Class at $0.63/varies, On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class at $0.78/varies.

Amazon DynamoDB Pricing Overview

Amazon DynamoDB has 3 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $0.78/varies. The Free Tier plan is free and is best for personal apps, prototypes, learning, and low-volume workloads using provisioned capacity on dynamodb standard table class. The On-Demand - Standard Table Class plan costs $0.63/varies, best for most serverless dynamodb workloads with variable or unpredictable traffic. The On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class plan costs $0.78/varies, best for infrequently accessed data where storage is the dominant cost.

The median Amazon DynamoDB customer pays $25/year based on 4 verified purchases.

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

This pricing was last verified in June 16, 2026 from 1 independent source.

Try Amazon DynamoDB Free

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database with consumption-based pricing — there are no fixed seat-based plans, and enterprise pricing requires contacting AWS Sales, though standard pay-per-use rates are published publicly. At small scale, DynamoDB is extremely cost-effective: a permanent free tier covers 25 GB of storage and approximately 200 million requests per month with no expiration, and typical low-traffic applications pay under $5/month. As throughput grows, on-demand pricing runs $1.25 per million write request units and $0.25 per million read request units, while switching to provisioned capacity with 1-year reserved commitments reduces costs by approximately 56% for steady workloads.

How Amazon DynamoDB Pricing Compares

Compare Amazon DynamoDB pricing against top alternatives in Database as a Service.

CockroachDB $0-$0.6/month Compare → Neon Free Compare → PlanetScale $0-$50/month Compare →

Compare Amazon DynamoDB vs Alternatives

Before committing to Amazon DynamoDB, compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.

VSCockroachDB
Free

Smaller, bursty workloads

Full comparison
VSNeon
Custom

Prototypes and side projects

Full comparison
VSPlanetScale
Free

Development

Full comparison

All Amazon DynamoDB alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for Amazon DynamoDB

The median Amazon DynamoDB buyer pays $25/year based on 4 verified purchase transactions.

What companies actually pay $25/yr Median across 4 community cost mentions
Review scores
Top pricing complaints
Unexpected bills from misunderstanding per-item (not per-API-call) billingCosts scale linearly and become prohibitive at sustained high throughputNo SQL support — requires designing all access patterns upfront before deploymentPer-table provisioned throughput leads to over-provisioning waste across many tables
Source: Community cost mentions (Reddit, Hacker News) — aggregated from 4 distinct user reports. Indicative only — not contract-grade data.

Amazon DynamoDB Year 1 Total Cost by Company Size

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

Minimal Internal Tool (1K Items, Low Traffic) $0 Year 1 total
$1.20/year
Total $0

A DynamoDB table with approximately 1,000 small items and minimal traffic, as reported by an engineering team using it for a low-scale internal use case.

Small App: 1M Writes + 1M Reads/Month $1 Year 1 total
$18/year
Total $1

On-demand pricing for approximately 1 million write request units and 1 million read request units per month. Excludes storage costs within the permanent free 25 GB tier.

Growing App: 3.55M Writes + 3.55M Reads/Month $2 Year 1 total
$32/year
Total $2

On-demand pricing for 3.55 million write request units and 3.55 million read request units per month. Represents a small production workload with real traffic.

Serverless Side Business (Lambda + S3 + DynamoDB) Under $100/month Year 1 total

Full serverless application serving a side business with thousands of users, combining Lambda, S3, and DynamoDB. Cost covers the entire stack — not DynamoDB in isolation.

Bulk Migration: 2 Billion Rows (One-Time Cost) $5,000 Year 1 total
one-time
Total $5,000

One-time cost of bulk-writing 2 billion rows to two DynamoDB tables via batch write API calls, without using the S3 import method. Illustrates the penalty for misunderstanding per-item billing vs. per-call billing.

Reddit (northrupthebandgeek, ExperiencedDevs, 2024)

How Amazon DynamoDB Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Amazon DynamoDB Free $0.78/varies
Aiven Free $1900/varies
Amazon RDS Custom Custom
Crunchy Bridge $9/varies $7680/varies
CockroachDB Free $0.6/month
Cloud Firestore Custom Custom

Detailed pricing comparisons:

Browse all Database as a Service pricing →

8 Amazon DynamoDB Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, Amazon DynamoDB has at least 8 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 8 hidden costs
  • Batch Write Unit Misunderstanding $1,000-$10,000
    critical 2 sources
    Hacker News "I just spent 8k USD on writing 2 billion rows to two tables because I misunderstood how Dynamo charges for write units."
    Reddit "I misunderstood pricing for dynamodb writes. I thought a single batch write of 25 items would cost one write unit. It costs 25 write units. Think I spent about 5k USD."
  • On-Demand vs. Provisioned Pricing Gap 50-600% of license costs
    high 2 sources
    Reddit "Suppose I have a table with 1,000 read units and 100 write units, that table would cost me $94.90/mth on provisioned pricing while on on-demand it would cost $657.00/mth."
    Hacker News "The downside of on-demand is the pricing - it's more expensive if you have continuous load. But it can easily become _much_ cheaper if you have naturally spiky load patterns."
  • Per-Table Throughput Over-Provisioning 15-50% of license costs
    high 1 source
    Hacker News "You have to provision throughput for each table individually, so you basically have to pay for the maximum throughput you expect for every single table all the time (you can only reduce your throughput once per day as far as I understand)."
  • Large Item Size Write Cost Multiplier 10-50% of license costs
    medium 1 source
    Hacker News "Each unit of throughput gives you one 1kb write/read per second. If you exceed your throughput for a second, the call fails."
  • Scan Operation Costs 20-100% of license costs
    high 2 sources
    Reddit "DynamoDB is a great database, super easy to operate and very consistently performant, but you're gonna have a hard time if you don't know what data access patterns you need (since there are no joins and scans are outrageously expensive)."
    Hacker News "DynamoDB's pricing scales sublinearly with volume; if it starts getting expensive it was an initial misuse of DynamoDB that got obvious with scale."
  • Global Secondary Index Write Amplification 20-500% of license costs
    medium 1 source
    Reddit "WCU cost scales with the number of GSIs"
  • Scale-Up Cost Cliff 10-50% of license costs
    high 2 sources
    Hacker News "DynamoDB is the most expensive one. For small datasets with low RPS it provides a lot of value, but once you scale, it becomes cheaper to run ourselves (even including licensing costs). I blame their linear pricing model."
    Hacker News "the pricing schemes on these services are designed to hook you with affordable prices in the beginning, but later on as your business grows they get much more expensive than hosting your own stuff."
  • Connected AWS Service Cost Amplification 100-400% of license costs
    medium 2 sources
    Reddit "API Gateway's pricing might also be a bit of a shocker, so double check the pricing for your estimated volumes. At high volumes, it can be 3-4x what you are paying for DynamoDB/Lambda."
    Reddit "each query also triggered your authorizer Lambda which has invocation fees. Then, each API call also writes data to CloudWatch twice: once for your GrahpQL logging, and then again the authorizer Lambda which writes it invocation logs."
Tip

Ask your Amazon DynamoDB 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 2 independent sources
Hacker News Tech community Reddit User discussions
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 22 source citations total.

Amazon DynamoDB Contract Terms

Amazon DynamoDB contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require No contract — usage-based billing, can stop usage at any time. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Auto-Renewal No
Cancellation Notice No contract — usage-based billing, can stop usage at any time
Minimum Commitment None for on-demand or standard provisioned mode; 1 year for reserved capacity
Mid-Term Downgrade Allowed
Payment Terms Monthly usage-based billing via AWS account
Price Escalation No published annual uplift schedule; AWS has historically reduced DynamoDB prices over time. Large-enterprise customers can negotiate custom pricing.
Note

Can switch from on-demand to provisioned and reduce capacity; however, provisioned capacity reductions are limited to once per day

Based on 2 verified sources

How to Negotiate Amazon DynamoDB Pricing

Amazon DynamoDB contracts are negotiable. These 6 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.

Negotiation Playbook 6 tactics
Buy Reserved Capacity for Steady Workloads high success

Commit to a 1-year reserved capacity purchase for tables with predictable, sustained throughput. Reserved capacity saves approximately 56% compared to standard provisioned pricing. Best applied after validating actual usage patterns over several months to avoid over-committing to capacity you won't use.

HN (jakozaur, 2018)
Start On-Demand, Switch to Provisioned When Monthly Bill Exceeds $50–$100 high success

Use On-Demand - Standard Table Class initially to avoid provisioning guesswork, especially for variable traffic. Track write request units at $0.625 per million, reads at $0.125 per million RRUs, and storage at $0.25 per GB-month; if storage dominates, compare On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class at $0.78 per million write request units and $0.10 per GB-month storage.

HN (abd12, 2020)
Use S3 Import for Bulk Data Loads high success

For initial data migrations or large backfills, use DynamoDB's table creation from S3 import instead of batch write API calls. S3 import pricing is far cheaper than paying per-row write request units. This avoids the documented mistake of spending $5,000–$8,000 on bulk loads that could have cost a fraction of that via S3 import.

HN (efxhoy, 2023)
Eliminate Scans via Proper Data Modeling high success

The highest-impact cost optimization is designing partition and sort keys so all access patterns are served by targeted queries rather than scans. A scan reads every item in the table; a targeted query reads only matching items. Investing in proper NoSQL data modeling upfront can reduce read costs by orders of magnitude at production scale.

Reddit/HN community consensus
Store Large Payloads in S3, Keep Only Metadata in DynamoDB high success

DynamoDB charges per KB read and written. Storing only lookup keys and small metadata fields in DynamoDB — with actual large payloads (files, documents, rich text) in S3 — keeps item sizes under 1 KB, minimizing both write/read unit consumption and storage costs significantly.

Reddit (AcrobaticLime6103, 2024)
Negotiate Enterprise Discount at Scale medium success

Large AWS accounts ($1M+/year AWS spend) can negotiate significant discounts on DynamoDB and related services. AWS enterprise teams have offered substantial discounts to retain large accounts evaluating migration to alternatives. Credibly building a migration plan to Cassandra or CosmosDB is the primary negotiating leverage. AWS has been documented discounting services by 40–80% for large accounts.

Reddit (anengineerandacat, 2024)
High success Medium Low / difficult

Full negotiation guide →

Amazon DynamoDB Price History

Pricing changes CostBench has tracked for Amazon DynamoDB, verified across 2 snapshots going back to 2026Q2.

  1. Amazon DynamoDB tier restructure

    Changed from 1 to 3 pricing tiers

  2. Amazon DynamoDB tier renamed

    "Contact Sales" renamed to "Free Tier"

Insufficient historical data

Amazon DynamoDB Pricing FAQ

01 Does Amazon DynamoDB have a free tier?

Yes — and it is permanent. DynamoDB's free tier does not expire after 12 months. It includes 25 GB of storage, 25 provisioned Write Capacity Units (WCU), and 25 provisioned Read Capacity Units (RCU) per month, which AWS states is sufficient for approximately 200 million requests per month.

02 How much does a DynamoDB batch write of 25 items cost?

25 write request units — one per item, not one per API call. DynamoDB bills per row written regardless of batch size. A BatchWriteItem call with 25 items costs the same as 25 individual PutItem calls. This is one of the most common and costly misunderstandings, with developers reporting $5,000–$8,000 charges from single bulk load operations.

03 When should I use on-demand pricing vs. provisioned capacity?

On-demand is best for unpredictable or spiky traffic — you pay per request with no capacity planning required. Provisioned is best for steady, predictable workloads where you can reserve capacity in advance. For identical throughput, provisioned is approximately 7x cheaper than on-demand at full utilization — the breakeven point is roughly 14% sustained utilization. Auto-scaling allows provisioned tables to adapt to changing demand automatically.

04 How much can I save with DynamoDB reserved capacity?

Approximately 56% compared to standard provisioned pricing, with a 1-year commitment. Reserved capacity is purchased for specific read and write unit quantities and applied against provisioned tables. It does not apply to on-demand pricing mode.

05 Why are DynamoDB scans expensive?

A scan reads every item in the table sequentially, consuming read request units for each item regardless of how many match your filter. Unlike a targeted query using a partition key — which reads only relevant items — a scan on a table with millions of records consumes millions of read units. The solution is to design your data model so all access patterns are served by partition key queries or GSI queries, not scans.

06 Does DynamoDB become more expensive as my application scales?

Yes — DynamoDB costs scale with usage. On-Demand - Standard Table Class starts at $0.625 per million write request units, with reads at $0.125 per million RRUs and storage at $0.25 per GB-month, while On-Demand - Standard-IA Table Class trades higher request pricing for $0.10 per GB-month storage. Small workloads may fit the Free Tier, but sustained production traffic can grow costs materially.

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