Key Principles
Understand the fundamentals of pricing
There are three fundamental drivers of cost with AWS: compute, storage, and outbound data transfer. These characteristics vary somewhat, depending on the AWS product and pricing model you choose.
In most cases, there is no charge for inbound data transfer or for data transfer between other AWS services within the same region. There are some exceptions, so be sure to verify data transfer rates before beginning. Outbound data transfer is aggregated across services and then charged at the outbound data transfer rate. This charge appears on the monthly statement as AWS Data Transfer Out. The more data you transfer, the less you pay per GB. For compute resources, you pay hourly from the time you launch a resource until the time you terminate it, unless you have made a reservation for which the cost is agreed upon beforehand. For data storage and transfer, you typically pay per GB.
Except as otherwise noted, our prices are exclusive of applicable taxes and duties, including VAT and sales tax
Use the right pricing model for the job
AWS offers several pricing models depending on product. These include:
• On Demand means you pay for compute or database capacity with no long-term commitments or upfront payments.
• Dedicated Instances (available with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)) run in a virtual private cloud (VPC) on hardware that’s dedicated to a single customer.
• Spot Instances are an Amazon EC2 pricing mechanism that lets you purchase spare computing capacity with no upfront commitment at discounted hourly rates.
• Reservations provide you with the ability to receive a greater discount, up to 75 percent, by paying for capacity ahead of time. More detail is provided in the section, “Optimizing costs with reservations.” Reservation options include: