AWS Route 53 cost explained: hosted zones, queries, and health checks

Quick answer

Route 53 charges $0.50 per hosted zone per month (first 25 zones) and $0.40 per million standard queries. Alias records pointing at AWS resources answer queries for free, latency and geolocation routing cost more per query, and each health check is a small monthly fee. The bill is zones plus query volume plus health checks.

Route 53 is cheap in absolute terms and easy to misread. Three lines make up the bill: hosted zones, queries answered, and health checks. Knowing which routing policy you picked and whether your records are aliases explains almost every dollar.

Hosted zones

Each hosted zone is $0.50 per month for the first 25 zones, then $0.10 per zone above that. This is a fixed cost you pay whether or not the zone answers a single query. Teams that create a zone per environment or per service accumulate zones quietly, so the first cleanup is deleting zones for domains you no longer serve.

Queries: the routing policy sets the rate

Query type	Rate
Standard (simple, weighted, failover)	$0.40 / million
Latency, geolocation, geoproximity	$0.60 to $0.70 / million
Alias to an AWS resource	Free

The most useful fact here is that alias records pointing at AWS resources such as an ALB, CloudFront distribution, or S3 website answer for free. Using an alias instead of a CNAME to an AWS endpoint removes the query charge for that record entirely.

Health checks

A health check is roughly $0.50 per month for an AWS endpoint and $0.75 for a non-AWS endpoint, plus small charges for optional features like string matching or HTTPS. A handful is trivial; hundreds of health checks across a large fleet become a line worth reviewing. Remove checks for endpoints that no longer exist.

Where the money actually goes

For most workloads the query charge is tiny because traffic is answered by aliases or cached by resolvers respecting your TTL. Longer TTLs mean fewer queries reach Route 53, so raising TTL on stable records lowers query volume. If your bill is surprising, it is usually many hosted zones, many health checks, or a high-cardinality latency policy, not raw query volume. Pair this with the data transfer picture for the full networking cost.

FAQ

How much does a Route 53 hosted zone cost?

A hosted zone is $0.50 per month for the first 25 zones in an account, then $0.10 per zone above 25. This is fixed regardless of query volume, so deleting unused zones is the first saving.

Are Route 53 alias queries free?

Yes. Alias records that point at AWS resources, ALB, NLB, CloudFront, S3 website, API Gateway, answer queries at no charge. Using an alias instead of a CNAME to an AWS endpoint removes the per-query cost for that record.

Why do latency and geolocation records cost more?

Latency-based, geolocation, and geoproximity routing require more work to answer, so they are billed at roughly $0.60 to $0.70 per million queries versus $0.40 for standard simple, weighted, and failover policies.

How do I reduce Route 53 query cost?

Use alias records to AWS resources (free queries), raise TTLs on stable records so resolvers cache longer and fewer queries reach Route 53, and delete unused hosted zones and health checks. Query cost is usually small; zones and health checks are more often the surprise.

How much do Route 53 health checks cost?

About $0.50 per month for an AWS endpoint and $0.75 for a non-AWS endpoint, plus small add-ons for HTTPS or string matching. A few are trivial; hundreds across a large fleet add up, so remove checks for endpoints that no longer exist.

Does C3X estimate Route 53 cost?

C3X prices aws_route53_zone and aws_route53_health_check from your Terraform, so hosted-zone and health-check costs appear before deploy. Query cost depends on traffic, which you supply as a usage assumption.

What to do next

See your DNS cost before you ship it. C3X prices Route 53 and the rest of your stack from Terraform against a live catalog. Try the quickstart.