AWS Pricing 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and alternatives compared
Prices last confirmed on Oct 14, 2026 on aws.amazon.com. Same data as Markdown or JSON.
Cite this data: Toolradar, AWS pricing verified Oct 2026, toolradar.com/tools/aws/pricing
AWS starts at $72/year on the Savings Plans plan.
Verified Oct 2026 from the official pricing page.
Is AWS worth the price?
AWS dominates cloud infrastructure with 31% market share and the broadest service catalog (200+ services), but that breadth is also its biggest cost trap.
The free tier is genuinely useful (750hrs EC2 t3.micro, 5GB S3, 1M Lambda requests/month) but expires after 12 months for most services except Lambda and DynamoDB. AWS is not expensive by default, it is expensive when you do not actively manage costs.
Teams that use Reserved Instances or Savings Plans save 30-60%, but teams that run everything on-demand and ignore their bill routinely overspend by 30-40%.
Pricing Plans
Free TrialFree Tier
Free
- 12 months free for many services
- 750 hours EC2 t2.micro
- 5GB S3 storage
- 25GB DynamoDB
- 1M Lambda requests/month
Pay-as-you-go
Usage-based
- No upfront costs
- Pay only for what you use
- No long-term contracts
- 200+ services available
Savings Plans
Up to 72% off
- 1 or 3 year commitment
- Flexible usage
- Compute and ML discounts
- Measured in $/hour
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Data transfer out
First 100GB/month is free, then $0.09/GB.
Cross-AZ data transfer
$0.01/GB in each direction between availability zones. Multi-AZ RDS, ECS tasks spread across AZs, and ALB routing all generate cross-AZ traffic.
EBS storage is not cheap at scale
gp3 volumes cost $0.08/GB/month.
CloudWatch logging costs
Log ingestion costs $0.50/GB.
Support plan costs
Basic support is free but only covers billing.
Free tier expiration trap
EC2 (750hrs t3.micro), RDS (750hrs db.t3.micro), and S3 (5GB) free tiers expire after 12 months. Many startups budget assuming free tier and get surprised by a 3-10x cost jump at month 13. Lambda and DynamoDB free tiers are permanent.
How AWS compares
4 of 6 direct competitors offer a free plan.
| Tool | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | $72/year, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| IBM Cloud | Contact sales | Yes |
| Alibaba Cloud | Contact sales | No |
| DigitalOcean | $4/month, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| Linode | $5/month, billing unit not specified | No |
| Netlify | $9/month, billing unit not specified | Yes |
| Render | $25/month, billing unit not specified | Yes |
AWS Pricing FAQ
How much does AWS cost?
AWS starts at $72/year on the Savings Plans plan. A free plan is also available.
Does AWS have a free plan?
Yes. AWS offers a free plan called "Free Tier". It includes: 12 months free for many services, 750 hours EC2 t2.micro, 5GB S3 storage.
Does AWS offer a free trial?
Yes. AWS offers a free trial.
What are alternatives to AWS?
Alternatives to AWS include IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode. DigitalOcean starts at $4/month, billing unit not specified; Linode starts at $5/month, billing unit not specified; Netlify starts at $9/month, billing unit not specified.
AWS alternatives
Direct competitors. Starting prices match the table above.
Sources
- Official AWS pricing: aws.amazon.com/pricing (verified Oct 2026)
- Cite this data: Toolradar, AWS pricing verified Oct 2026, toolradar.com/tools/aws/pricing
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