What is the AWS Pricing Calculator?

The AWS Pricing Calculator (calculator.aws) is Amazon's official tool for estimating AWS service costs. It lets you model your architecture, select services, and generate a monthly cost estimate before deploying. Our estimator provides quick ballpark figures for common services.

How much does EC2 cost per month?

EC2 costs vary by instance type and region. A t3.micro (2 vCPU, 1GB RAM) costs ~$8.47/month on-demand in us-east-1. A t3.medium (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) costs ~$30.37/month. Reserved Instances can save 30–60% vs on-demand pricing.

How much does S3 storage cost?

S3 Standard storage costs $0.023 per GB per month in us-east-1. So 100GB = $2.30/month. S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3-IA (Infrequent Access), and Glacier provide lower costs for less frequently accessed data.

How can I reduce my AWS bill?

Key strategies: (1) Use Reserved Instances or Savings Plans for steady-state workloads (save 30–60%). (2) Use Spot Instances for fault-tolerant jobs (save up to 90%). (3) Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering. (4) Set up billing alerts. (5) Use AWS Cost Explorer to identify unused resources. (6) Right-size instances.

Is AWS Free Tier actually free?

AWS Free Tier offers 12 months of limited free usage for new accounts, including 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro EC2, 5GB S3 storage, and 1 million Lambda requests/month. After the free tier, standard rates apply. Always set up billing alerts to avoid surprises.

AWS Pricing Calculator

Estimate your monthly AWS cloud costs for EC2 instances, S3 storage, Lambda functions, and data transfer. Use this quick estimator to budget before you deploy — then verify with the official AWS Pricing Calculator.

AWS Cost Estimator (us-east-1 on-demand pricing)

Instance Type

Number of Instances

Hours per Day Running

EBS Storage per Instance (GB)

Storage Amount (GB)

PUT/GET Requests per Month (thousands)

Storage Class

Requests per Month (millions)

Avg Duration per Request (ms)

Memory Allocated (MB)

Data Transfer OUT to Internet (GB/month)

Data Transfer Between Regions (GB/month)

AWS Pricing at a Glance (us-east-1, 2024–2025)

Service	Tier	Price
EC2 t3.micro	On-Demand	$0.0104/hr (~$7.59/mo)
EC2 t3.medium	On-Demand	$0.0416/hr (~$30.37/mo)
EC2 m6i.xlarge	On-Demand	$0.192/hr (~$140.16/mo)
EBS gp3 Storage	Standard	$0.08/GB/mo
S3 Standard	First 50 TB	$0.023/GB/mo
S3 Standard-IA	All storage	$0.0138/GB/mo
Lambda Requests	After free tier	$0.20 per 1M requests
Lambda Compute	After free tier	$0.0000166667/GB-second
Data Transfer OUT	First 10 TB	$0.09/GB (first 100GB free)
RDS db.t3.micro	On-Demand	$0.017/hr (~$12.41/mo)
CloudFront	First 10 TB	$0.0085/GB

How to Reduce Your AWS Bill

AWS costs can spiral quickly without planning. Here are the most effective cost-reduction strategies:

Reserved Instances / Savings Plans: Commit to 1 or 3 years and save 30–60% vs on-demand. Best for always-on workloads like production databases and app servers.
Spot Instances: Bid on unused EC2 capacity for up to 90% savings. Ideal for batch processing, CI/CD pipelines, and fault-tolerant workloads.
Right-sizing: Use AWS Compute Optimizer to identify oversized instances. Many teams run m5.xlarge when t3.medium would suffice.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering: Automatically moves data between access tiers. Saves money on infrequently accessed objects with no retrieval fee.
Billing Alerts: Set up AWS Budget alerts at 50%, 80%, and 100% of your monthly budget to avoid surprise bills.
AWS Free Tier: New accounts get 750 hrs/month of t2.micro/t3.micro EC2, 5GB S3, and 1M Lambda requests free for 12 months.

Official AWS Pricing Calculator

For precise estimates across all 200+ AWS services, use the official AWS Pricing Calculator at calculator.aws. It allows you to model full architectures, compare Reserved vs On-Demand pricing, and export estimates. Our tool above provides quick ballpark figures for the most common services.

Frequently Asked Questions

The AWS Pricing Calculator (calculator.aws) is Amazon's official tool for estimating costs across all 200+ AWS services. You model your architecture, configure services, and get a monthly cost estimate. Our estimator above provides quick ballpark figures for EC2, S3, Lambda, and data transfer.

EC2 costs depend on instance type and region. In us-east-1 (N. Virginia): t3.micro runs ~$7.59/month, t3.medium ~$30.37/month, m6i.xlarge ~$140/month — all on-demand. Reserved Instances (1-year, no upfront) typically save 30–40% on those prices.

S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB per month in us-east-1. 100 GB = $2.30/month. Additional costs include PUT/COPY/POST/LIST requests ($0.005 per 1,000) and GET requests ($0.0004 per 1,000). Data retrieval for S3-IA and Glacier adds fees.

AWS Lambda has a permanent free tier: 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute per month — forever, not just for new accounts. Most small to medium apps stay within the free tier. Beyond that, Lambda costs $0.20 per 1M requests plus compute time charges.

The biggest savings come from: (1) Reserved Instances or Savings Plans for steady workloads (30–60% savings), (2) Spot Instances for batch jobs (up to 90% savings), (3) right-sizing over-provisioned instances, (4) enabling S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and (5) using CloudFront to reduce S3 egress costs.