AWS Global Accelerator cost: the per-GB premium, and when it's not a CDN

Quick answer

Global Accelerator costs $0.025/hour (~$18/month) per accelerator plus a per-GB data-transfer premium (~$0.015-0.105/GB) on top of normal data transfer. The hourly fee is trivial; the premium scales with traffic. Use it for static anycast IPs, fast failover, and latency-sensitive global apps — not for cacheable content, which belongs on CloudFront.

Global Accelerator is easy to mistake for a CDN and bill-shocked over when it isn't used like one. It improves the network path for latency-sensitive, non-cacheable traffic via AWS's backbone and anycast IPs — and it charges a premium on every GB to do so. Knowing what it's for keeps that premium intentional.

The two charges

Accelerator fee: $0.025/hour (~$18/month) per accelerator, flat. Trivial.
Data transfer premium: a per-GB charge (~$0.015-0.105/GB depending on regions) on top of standard data transfer, billed at the higher of the relevant rates. This is the real cost at scale.

When it earns the premium

Global Accelerator is worth it when you need:

Static anycast IPs that don't change as backends move.
Fast, automatic regional failover for high availability.
Lower, more consistent latency by routing over the AWS backbone instead of the public internet — for global, latency-sensitive applications.

It's not a CDN

The common, costly confusion: putting Global Accelerator in front of cacheable content. That's CloudFront's job — a CDN caches at the edge and bills mainly per-GB egress, far cheaper for static content. Global Accelerator doesn't cache; it optimizes the path for traffic that must reach your origin. For the caching-cost picture, see the CDN cost comparison (Azure, but the CDN-vs-path-optimization distinction is the same).

Keeping it down

Use it only where anycast routing and failover genuinely help.
Put cacheable content on CloudFront instead.
Consolidate endpoints under one accelerator rather than spinning up several.
Model the per-GB premium for your traffic so it's a deliberate cost.

FAQ

How much does AWS Global Accelerator cost?

A fixed accelerator fee of $0.025/hour (~$18/month) per accelerator, plus a data-transfer-premium charge per GB on top of standard data transfer — the premium varies by source and destination region (roughly $0.015-0.105/GB). The hourly fee is small; the per-GB premium is what scales with traffic.

What is the data transfer premium?

Global Accelerator charges a premium on every GB it carries, billed at the higher of the inbound or outbound rate for the AWS edge and region involved. This is in addition to normal data-transfer costs, so high-traffic accelerators are dominated by the premium, not the $18/month base.

Is Global Accelerator worth the cost?

When you need static anycast IPs, fast regional failover, or improved latency by routing over the AWS backbone instead of the public internet — yes, for latency-sensitive global applications. If you only need content delivery, CloudFront (a CDN) is usually the cheaper and better fit; the two solve different problems.

Global Accelerator vs CloudFront — which is cheaper?

They're not substitutes. CloudFront is a CDN that caches content at the edge and bills mainly per-GB egress; Global Accelerator improves network path and failover for non-cacheable, latency-sensitive TCP/UDP traffic and bills a per-GB premium. For static/cacheable content CloudFront is cheaper; for global low-latency applications Global Accelerator does a different job.

How do I reduce Global Accelerator costs?

Use it only where its anycast routing and failover genuinely help (don't put it in front of cacheable content that belongs on CloudFront), consolidate endpoints under one accelerator rather than many, and model the per-GB premium for your traffic so the cost is intentional rather than a surprise.

How does C3X estimate Global Accelerator cost?

C3X prices an aws_globalaccelerator_accelerator at its fixed hourly fee and treats the data-transfer premium as usage-driven, so the base cost is visible before deployment and you can model the per-GB premium in c3x-usage.yml.

What to do next

The base fee is small; the per-GB premium is what to model before you route production traffic through it. C3X prices an aws_globalaccelerator_accelerator at its hourly fee and models the transfer premium as usage, so the cost is intentional. The quickstart runs it in minutes.