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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pricing: Plans & Features 2026
AWS Free Tier starts at $0/mo and includes 750 EC2 hours, while alternatives like Kinsta start at $35/mo.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans and pricing
High· Verified July 2, 2026
AWS Free Tier
FreeBest for: Ideal for new users to explore AWS services without upfront costs
- ✓Access to a selection of AWS services for free
- ✓Includes 12 months of free access to specific services
- ✓Offers always free access to other services up to certain usage limits
- ✓Allows new AWS customers to get started with the cloud
View on vendor site
MOST POPULARPay-as-you-go (On-Demand)
Contact SalesBest for: Offers maximum flexibility with no long-term commitments
- ✓Pay only for the individual services you use
- ✓No upfront commitments or long-term contracts
- ✓Start or stop using a service at any time
- ✓Ideal for new applications or unpredictable workloads
View on vendor site
Savings Plans
Contact SalesBest for: Provides significant discounts over On-Demand pricing in exchange for a 1-year or 3-year commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage.
- ✓Flexible pricing model offering significant savings
- ✓Commit to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour)
- ✓Available for 1-year or 3-year terms
- ✓Applies to EC2, Fargate, Lambda, and certain database services
View on vendor site
Reserved Instances
Contact SalesBest for: Offers a discount compared to On-Demand pricing by committing to a specific instance configuration for a 1-year or 3-year term.
- ✓Discounted pricing for committing to specific instance types
- ✓Up to 75% savings compared to On-Demand
- ✓Available for 1-year or 3-year terms
- ✓Best for applications with steady-state usage
View on vendor site
Spot Instances
Contact SalesBest for: Leverages unused EC2 capacity for up to 90% savings compared to On-Demand prices
- ✓Up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices
- ✓Utilize unused EC2 capacity
- ✓Suitable for fault-tolerant and flexible applications
- ✓Instances can be interrupted with two minutes of notification
View on vendor site
Private Pricing
Contact Sales- ✓Customized pricing and commercial benefits for large commitments
- ✓Access to discounts across a broad range of AWS services
- ✓Requires direct engagement with an AWS Account Manager
- ✓Tailored for enterprise-level usage and specific needs
View on vendor site
Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing: the quick answer
AWS has no flat sticker price: it bills pay-as-you-go on usage as of July 2, 2026, across 6 plan types with a free tier. The Free Tier at $0 covers 750 monthly hours of EC2 micro instances and 5 GB S3. Past that it meters. On-Demand pays full rate, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances trade a 1 or 3-year commit for up to 75 percent off, and Spot reaches 90 percent off if you can eat interruptions. An On-Demand t3.micro in us-east-1 runs $0.0104/hour. You pay for what you run.
Use the interactive Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing calculator to estimate your exact monthly cost at your team size, with annual-billing savings and the hidden costs counted in.
Free tier
Yes
Billing model
Freemium
Annual discount
Not offered
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is free to start, against a $11/mo median across 21 cloud hosting tools we track.
What Amazon Web Services (AWS) really costs
What sits on top of the plan fee
AWS pricing is a per-resource rate card, not a plan fee. What you pay comes down to instance family, storage class, and how much you commit up front.
Compute (EC2)
t3.micro burstable, On-Demand Linux, us-east-1
Compute (EC2)
m5.large general purpose, On-Demand Linux, us-east-1
Storage (S3)
Standard class, first 50 TB/mo, us-east-1
Data transfer out
First 100 GB/mo free, then tiered
Committed-use discount
Reserved Instances or Savings Plans vs On-Demand
Pricing Expert Take
Independent analysis · Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Verified Pricing Data
Value Analysis
AWS operates on a completely different paradigm than the category median of $16.49/mo. Instead of flat-rate plans, it relies on a Pay-as-you-go (On-Demand) model billed by the hour, second, gigabyte, or request, alongside a Free Tier offering $100 to $200 in initial credits. For teams that can commit to 1-year or 3-year terms, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances slash costs by up to 72% and 75% respectively, while Spot Instances offer up to 90% off for interruptible workloads. It is highly worth the investment for scaling enterprises, but smaller projects will find the pricing model unnecessarily complex compared to simple flat-rate hosts.
Hidden Costs
- Overage charges when exceeding the strict usage limits of the 30+ always-free services on the Free Tier
- Sudden cost spikes from unmonitored resource consumption, API requests, or data transfers
- Long-term financial lock-in when committing to 1-year or 3-year Savings Plans or Reserved Instances to get advertised discounts
Red Flags
The biggest risk with AWS is the lack of hard spending caps, which leads to runaway bills and unexpected invoices that catch developers off guard. Users frequently report extreme anxiety over complex billing dashboards and the inability to easily predict monthly costs.
"I'm getting invoices... How does the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Charges/Bills?"
"They have not removed the charge so I have cancelled my credit card"
"AWS Billing - What the heck are we using it for?"
Based on analysis of recent Reddit and G2 discussions.
Green Wins
Even the free tier offers unmatched breadth of 200+ fully-featured services - strong value at no cost.
- Unmatched breadth of 200+ fully-featured services
- Most extensive global cloud infrastructure and availability zones
- Deepest enterprise adoption and third-party ecosystem support
User Voices
"it seems potentially super cheap like most people paying"
"I got one of those $1.000 credits... but it already run out"
"Those have flat-rate monthly pricing plans... and $19+tax for Q"
Verdict
Startups and developers testing concepts should stick strictly to the AWS Free Tier, while scaling enterprises with predictable workloads should commit to Savings Plans or the Enterprise Discount Program to maximize discounts. If you want to avoid billing surprises and prefer predictable, flat-rate monthly pricing, host your applications with DigitalOcean starting closer to the category median.
ComparEdge EditorialUpdated: July 2, 2026
Amazon Web Services (AWS) price history
Expert verified·Updated July 2, 2026
Price & Data Intelligence SyncLast verified: July 2, 2026 · CE-CLOUD-2026W23-E86D3B · ✓ Pricing updated Jun 6, 2026
Up to date
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Frequently asked questions
How does Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing compare?
See how Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s 6 pricing plans stack up against similar Cloud Hosting tools.
Research Reports
Sources & Data Trail · Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- 1.Official Pricing Page·Source of verified tiers(Checked: 2026-07-02)
- 2.Official Website·Official vendor website
- 3.G2·G2 verified user reviews · 4.5/5 · 80 reviews
- 4.Capterra·Capterra verified user reviews · 4.6/5
- 5.TrustRadius·TrustRadius verified reviews
- 6.PeerSpot·PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews
- 7.StackShare·StackShare developer community