How AWS Pricing Works

Publication date: February 24, 2023 (Document revisions)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps you move faster, reduce IT costs, and attain global scale through a broad set of global compute, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment services. One of the main benefits of cloud services is the ability it gives you to optimize costs to match your needs, even as those needs change over time.

Introduction

AWS has the services to help you build sophisticated applications with increased flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Whether you're looking for compute power, database storage, content delivery, or other functionality, with AWS you pay only for the individual services you need, for as long as you use them, without complex licensing. AWS offers you a variety of pricing models for over 160 cloud services. You only pay for the services you consume, and once you stop using them, there are no additional costs or termination fees. This whitepaper provides an overview of how AWS pricing works across some of the most widely used services. The latest pricing information for each AWS service is available at: AWS Pricing.

Are you Well-Architected?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.

For more expert guidance and best practices for your cloud architecture—reference architecture deployments, diagrams, and whitepapers—refer to the AWS Architecture Center.