AWS cost calculators
AWS S3 Cost Calculator
Estimate your monthly Amazon S3 cost across storage classes, requests, data retrieval, and data transfer — with a clear, itemized breakdown. Free, instant, and no sign-up.
Prices: AWS list rates for US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1), last verified June 6, 2026.
How AWS S3 pricing works
Amazon S3 doesn't have a single "per-gigabyte" price. Your bill is built from four main components, and which ones matter depends on how you use the bucket.
1. Storage
You pay per GB-month for the data you keep, and the rate depends on the storage class. S3 Standard is priced for frequent access; infrequent-access and Glacier classes drop the storage rate sharply in exchange for retrieval fees and (for Glacier) slower access.
| Storage class | Storage $/GB-mo | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | $0.023 | Frequently accessed data. No retrieval fees; highest storage rate. |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | $0.023 | Auto-moves objects between tiers. Small per-object monitoring fee, no retrieval fees. |
| S3 Standard-IA | $0.0125 | Infrequent access, multi-AZ. Lower storage rate, per-GB retrieval fee. |
| S3 One Zone-IA | $0.01 | Infrequent access in a single AZ. Cheapest IA storage, per-GB retrieval fee. |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004 | Archive with millisecond access. Very low storage rate, higher retrieval fee. |
| S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval | $0.0036 | Archive with minutes-to-hours retrieval. Bulk retrieval can be free. |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | $0.00099 | Lowest-cost archive, 12–48h retrieval. For long-term cold storage. |
2. Requests
Every API call costs a tiny amount, priced per 1,000 requests. Writes (PUT, COPY, POST, LIST) cost more than reads (GET, SELECT). For high-traffic buckets these add up fast — a million GETs on S3 Standard is $0.40, but ten million is $4.00.
3. Data retrieval
Infrequent-access and Glacier classes charge a per-GB fee each time you read data back. This is the cost most people forget: cold storage is cheap to hold but can be expensive to access, so the cheapest class isn't always the cheapest overall.
4. Data transfer out
Uploading to S3 is free. Reading within the same region or sending data to CloudFront is free. You pay for data transferred out to the internet: the first 100 GB each month is free, then it's tiered starting at $0.09/GB. Serving large files to the public is often the single biggest line on an S3 bill — and a reason to put CloudFront in front of your bucket.
Frequently asked questions
- How is AWS S3 pricing calculated?
- Your S3 bill is the sum of five things: storage (per GB-month, by storage class), requests (PUT/GET and friends, priced per 1,000), data retrieval (per GB, for infrequent-access and Glacier classes), data transfer out to the internet (tiered per GB, with the first 100 GB/month free), and optional management features. This calculator adds up the first four — the ones that dominate almost every real bill.
- How much does it cost to store 1 TB in Amazon S3?
- In US East (N. Virginia), 1 TB (1,024 GB) of S3 Standard storage is about $23.55 per month at the list rate of $0.023/GB. The same terabyte is roughly $12.80 in Standard-IA, $4.10 in Glacier Instant Retrieval, and about $1.01 in Glacier Deep Archive — but the colder classes add per-GB retrieval fees when you read the data back.
- Is data transfer into S3 free?
- Yes. Data transferred into S3 (uploads) is free. You also pay nothing to move data from S3 to Amazon CloudFront. You're charged for data transferred out of S3 to the internet, where the first 100 GB per month is free and the rest is tiered (starting at $0.09/GB in US East).
- What is the cheapest S3 storage class?
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive has the lowest storage rate (about $0.00099/GB-month, ~$1/TB), but retrieval takes 12–48 hours and incurs per-GB retrieval and request fees. It's ideal for long-term archives you rarely touch. For data you read occasionally but need instantly, Glacier Instant Retrieval or Standard-IA usually cost less overall once retrieval is factored in.
- Does S3 have a free tier?
- New AWS accounts get a 12-month free tier: 5 GB of S3 Standard, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests per month. This calculator shows standard on-demand list prices, not the free tier, so it reflects what you'd pay at scale.
- Why is my S3 bill higher than just the storage cost?
- Usually because of requests, retrieval, and egress. High-traffic buckets rack up GET request charges; infrequent-access and Glacier classes charge per-GB retrieval every time you read; and serving files directly to the internet (rather than via CloudFront) adds data-transfer-out costs. The itemized breakdown above shows exactly where the money goes.
- How do Glacier retrieval fees work?
- Glacier classes charge a per-GB retrieval fee plus a per-request fee when you restore objects. Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers Bulk (cheapest, slowest), Standard, and Expedited speeds; Deep Archive offers Standard and Bulk. This calculator uses the Standard retrieval rate as a sensible default.
- S3 Standard-IA vs One Zone-IA — what's the difference?
- Both are for infrequently accessed data with the same retrieval fee. Standard-IA stores copies across at least three Availability Zones; One Zone-IA keeps a single copy in one AZ for about 20% less, trading durability for price. Use One Zone-IA only for re-creatable data.
- Does this calculator include taxes or Savings Plans?
- No. It estimates on-demand list prices before tax. Volume discounts, private pricing, EDP commitments, and tax are not included, so treat the result as an upper-bound planning estimate.
- How accurate and up to date is this calculator?
- It uses AWS list prices for US East (N. Virginia), last verified June 6, 2026. AWS changes prices occasionally and regional rates differ, so always confirm a final number against the official AWS Pricing Calculator before budgeting.
More AWS cost calculators
Part of a growing set of free AWS cost tools. See all calculators.
- EC2 Cost Calculator — coming soon
- Lambda Cost Calculator — coming soon
- Data Transfer Cost Calculator — coming soon