1. Choose an Architecture

2. Adjust Parameters

Monthly Annual

3. Cost Estimate

Estimated Monthly Cost

$0.00

AWS Free Tier Coverage

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Understanding AWS Pricing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, meaning you only pay for the resources you actually consume. While this offers flexibility, it can make cost estimation challenging -- especially when combining multiple services into a complete architecture.

How Much Does AWS Cost?

AWS costs vary dramatically depending on your architecture. A simple static website hosted on S3 and CloudFront can cost under $5/month, while a production machine learning inference pipeline can run thousands per month. The key factors that drive cost are:

Compute -- EC2 instances, Lambda invocations, ECS Fargate tasks, or SageMaker endpoints
Storage -- S3 object storage, EBS volumes, RDS database storage
Data Transfer -- Bandwidth out to the internet, between regions, or between services
Requests -- API Gateway calls, CloudFront requests, DynamoDB read/write units

AWS Free Tier

AWS offers a generous free tier for new accounts (12 months) and some always-free services. This includes 1 million Lambda requests/month, 750 hours of t2.micro/t3.micro EC2, 5 GB of S3 storage, and 25 GB of DynamoDB storage. Our calculator shows exactly which parts of your estimate are covered by the free tier.

Cheapest Way to Host on AWS

For most small projects, the cheapest hosting option is a static site on S3 + CloudFront. If you need server-side logic, a serverless architecture using Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB scales to zero and costs nothing at low traffic levels. Traditional EC2-based hosting starts around $8-10/month for the smallest instances and increases with traffic and compute requirements.

Tips for Reducing AWS Costs

Reserved Instances -- Commit to 1 or 3 years for 30-60% savings on EC2 and RDS
Spot Instances -- Use for fault-tolerant workloads at up to 90% discount
Right-sizing -- Monitor utilization and downsize over-provisioned instances
S3 Lifecycle Policies -- Automatically move infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers
Auto Scaling -- Scale down during low-traffic periods
AWS Cost Explorer -- Use native tools to identify spending trends