aws
356 articles on aws — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
AWS Network Firewall cost: endpoint hours plus data processed
Network Firewall bills a per-endpoint hourly fee (per Availability Zone) plus per GB of traffic inspected. The always-on per-AZ endpoint fee is the surprise. Centralizing inspection is the lever. Here is the model.
AWS Outposts cost: paying for AWS hardware in your data center
Outposts brings AWS infrastructure on-premises, priced as a capacity commitment (upfront and/or monthly over a 3-year term) for the rack or servers. It suits low-latency or data-residency needs, at a substantial fixed cost. Here is the model.
AWS Lake Formation cost: free governance, you pay for the storage-optimizer
Lake Formation's governance and permissions add no direct charge; you pay for the underlying S3, Glue, and Athena, plus a storage-optimization (compaction) charge for governed tables. The underlying services are the real cost. Here is the model.
AWS CloudHSM cost: dedicated hardware security modules by the hour
CloudHSM bills per HSM instance-hour (around $1.45, so about $1,000+/month each), and you need at least two for high availability. It is expensive dedicated hardware for strict compliance needs. For most, KMS is far cheaper. Here is when CloudHSM is required.
AWS Translate cost: per character of text translated
Translate bills per character of input text (about $15 per million), with a free tier and higher rates for custom terminology and Active Custom Translation. Translating more text than needed drives the bill. Here is the per-character model.
AWS Polly cost: per character, standard vs neural voices
Polly bills per character of text synthesized to speech, with neural voices costing several times more than standard, plus a free tier. Synthesizing the same text repeatedly, or using neural where standard suffices, drives the bill. Here is the model.
AWS Kendra cost: an always-on index with a high baseline
Kendra bills per index-hour by edition (Developer and Enterprise), running around the clock, plus connector scans and extra query or document capacity. The always-on index fee is a significant baseline. Here is when Kendra's intelligent search pays off.
AWS Personalize cost: training, ingestion, and inference capacity
Personalize bills data ingestion, training hours to build recommendation models, and real-time inference by provisioned throughput (TPS-hours). Over-provisioned recommendation capacity and frequent retraining drive the bill. Here is the model.
AWS Connect cost: pay per minute of contact-center usage
Amazon Connect bills per minute of end-customer contact usage plus telephony (per-minute inbound/outbound and phone number charges), with optional add-ons for features. Call volume and duration drive the bill. Here is the pay-as-you-go model.
AWS Macie cost: per GB of S3 data evaluated for sensitive data
Macie bills a per-bucket inventory charge plus per GB of S3 objects analyzed for sensitive data. Scanning entire large buckets on every run drives the bill. Sampling and scoping to sensitive data are the levers. Here is the model.
AWS Shield Advanced cost: a flat subscription for DDoS protection
Shield Advanced costs a flat subscription (about $3,000/month, with a one-year commitment) covering an organization, plus data transfer for protected resources. It suits high-value, attack-prone applications. Here is when the subscription pays off.
AWS Cloud Map cost: per registered resource and per lookup
Cloud Map bills per registered service-discovery resource per month and per API discovery call, plus any health checks. It is inexpensive, but high-frequency discovery lookups from many clients can add up. Here is the model.
AWS App Mesh cost: the mesh is free, the sidecars are not
App Mesh adds no charge of its own; you pay for the Envoy proxy sidecars that run alongside your services, consuming CPU and memory on every task or pod. At scale, the sidecar overhead is the real cost. Here is what to watch.
AWS Rekognition cost: per image and per minute of video analyzed
Rekognition bills per image processed for image analysis and per minute for video, with rates by feature (labels, faces, moderation, text). High-volume or per-frame analysis drives the bill. Here is the model and how to control it.
AWS Textract cost: per page, by the analysis you run
Textract bills per page processed, with higher rates for forms, tables, and query features than plain text detection. Running advanced analysis on documents that only need text extraction over-pays. Here is the per-page model.
AWS Transcribe cost: per second of audio transcribed
Transcribe bills per second of audio (rounded up per request), with higher rates for features like speaker identification, medical, and custom models. Long audio and premium features drive the bill. Here is the per-second model.
AWS Comprehend cost: per unit of text analyzed
Comprehend bills per unit of text (100 characters, with a per-request minimum) for NLP tasks like sentiment, entities, and key phrases, with higher rates for custom models. Analyzing more text or in more ways than needed drives the bill.
AWS Security Hub cost: per security check and per finding
Security Hub bills per security check evaluated against your resources and per finding ingested from integrated services, both tiered. Large accounts with many resources and chatty integrations drive the bill. Here is the model.
AWS Inspector cost: per instance and per image scanned
Amazon Inspector bills per EC2 instance scanned per month and per container image scanned (with re-scans on updates), plus Lambda function scanning. Large fleets and frequent image pushes drive the bill. Here is the model.
AWS t4g vs t3 cost: Graviton burstable instances are ~20% cheaper
t4g (Graviton, ARM) burstable instances cost about 20% less than t3 (Intel) for comparable size, often with better performance per dollar. The catch is ARM compatibility. Here is the comparison and when the switch is free money.
AWS instance families explained: matching the family to the workload
AWS instance families (general purpose, compute, memory, storage, and accelerated) target different workloads, and using the wrong family over-pays for resources you do not need. This is a practical guide to choosing the cost-effective family.
AWS i4i vs i3 cost: newer storage-optimized instances, better value
i4i storage-optimized instances offer faster NVMe local storage and better price-performance than the older i3 generation. For high-IOPS, low-latency local-disk workloads, the newer generation is usually the cost-effective choice. Here is the comparison.
AWS Elemental MediaConvert cost: per minute of output, by settings
MediaConvert bills per minute of output video, priced by resolution, frame rate, and features like HDR or advanced codecs. Encoding more than you need, in higher tiers than required, drives the bill. Here is how the per-minute model works.
AWS IoT Core cost: messages, connection minutes, and rules
IoT Core bills connectivity per million connection-minutes, messaging per million messages, and rules-engine actions, plus device shadow and registry operations. Chatty devices and heavy rule fan-out drive the bill. Here is the model.