AWS data transfer & egress pricing
AWS egress pricing is scattered across EC2, S3, CloudFront, Direct Connect, and a dozen other service pages. This is the consolidated reference: every tier, every service, every hidden surcharge, with a calculator that respects all of it.
Headline rate: $0.09/GB first 10 TB, after the 100 GB free tier. Source →
How much does AWS egress cost?
AWS charges $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB of internet egress each month after a 100 GB free allowance, then $0.085/GB for the next 40 TB, $0.07/GB for the next 100 TB, and $0.05/GB above 150 TB. So 1 TB/month costs $83.16, 10 TB costs $912.60, and 50 TB costs $4,394.70 in base egress, before hidden surcharges like NAT Gateway and cross-AZ transfer.
AWS calls this line item data transfer out to the internet. The terms AWS bandwidth cost, data transfer pricing, and egress fees all refer to the same tiered $0.09/GB charge, there is no separate bandwidth meter.
Open the AWS egress cost calculator → to model your own volume with the full tier breakdown, or jump to the inline tool ↓. Just want the rate table? See AWS data transfer out to internet pricing →.
US regions · standard egress · excludes surcharges
AWS internet egress tiers
USD per GB · standard regionsinternet egress, post-free-tier
10-50 TB band
50-150 TB band
high-volume
[01]Calculate your AWS egress
Enter monthly volume to see the tier breakdown. Every GB is charged at the rate of the tier it falls into. Prefer a dedicated tool? Open the AWS egress cost calculator → for worked dollar examples at common volumes.
Worked examples at common DevOps volumes
First 10 TB tier. After 100 GB free, 924 GB at $0.09 = $83.16; first 100 GB free contributes $0.
Entire 10 TB at $0.09/GB minus the 100 GB free allowance (10,140 GB billable). The single-tier sweet spot.
10 TB at $0.09 + the rest at $0.085 (less the 100 GB free) — second tier kicks in at 10 TB cumulative.
10 + 40 + 100 across three tiers (less the 100 GB free). Third tier (50-150 TB) charges $0.07/GB.
All figures use standard internet egress rates from US regions, exclude CloudFront and VPC peering, and assume a single AWS account aggregating volume across the month.
Lambda-heavy scenario
Lambda response payloads count as standard internet egress. 100M invocations/mo at 4 KB avg response = 400 GB/mo egress. Cost: about \$27/mo. Most teams underestimate this.
CDN-offload scenario
Putting CloudFront in front of S3 cuts S3-to-internet egress to \$0 (free to CloudFront). CloudFront then charges \$0.085/GB first 10 TB — a saving of \$0.005/GB plus the architectural benefits.
Cross-AZ replication scenario
RDS Multi-AZ, EKS pod-to-pod, ElastiCache cross-AZ all charge \$0.01/GB each way (\$0.02/GB round trip). A chatty microservice fabric can quietly run \$1,000+/mo in cross-AZ traffic at moderate scale.
[02]Per-service egress rates
Most AWS services share the standard internet egress tiers, but the gotchas vary. Here is the cheat sheet.
| # | Service | Egress rate | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | EC2 | Tiered ($0.09/GB start) | Standard internet egress. NAT Gateway adds $0.045/GB if used. |
| 02 | S3 | Tiered ($0.09/GB start) | Same internet pricing. S3 to CloudFront in same account is free. |
| 03 | CloudFront | $0.085/GB N. America | Edge-cached. Cheaper than direct S3/EC2 at scale. |
| 04 | RDS | Tiered ($0.09/GB start) | Same as EC2. Cross-AZ replication adds $0.01/GB each way. |
| 05 | Lambda | Tiered ($0.09/GB start) | Counts toward standard internet egress tiers. |
| 06 | API Gateway | $0.09/GB on top of req fees | Separately billed from base egress, easy to miss. |
| 07 | Direct Connect | $0.02/GB egress | Plus port-hour charges. Cheaper above ~3 TB/mo on a 1 Gbps port. |
| 08 | VPN Gateway | $0.05/hr + egress | Adds up; consider Direct Connect at scale. |
Storing and serving from S3? The tiers are the same, but the free paths differ: see Amazon S3 egress cost → (S3-to-CloudFront free, cross-region $0.02/GB, Transfer Acceleration surcharges).
At sustained volume, a dedicated link cuts egress to $0.02/GB. See the AWS Direct Connect pricing and breakeven math → (port-hour fees, $0.02/GB DTO, and the volume where DX beats internet egress).
Moving data between regions? That is a separate meter: see AWS cross-region data transfer cost → ($0.02/GB from us-east-1 to almost every region, $0.01/GB to us-east-2, with the full corridor table and replication math).
[03]AWS CloudFront data transfer out pricing (2026)
Serving through CloudFront instead of direct S3/EC2 egress changes the per-GB rate and the free allowance. CloudFront data transfer out costs $0.085/GB for the first 10 TB per month in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe, after a 1 TB always-free tier (versus only 100 GB free on direct egress). It drops to $0.080 next 40 TB, $0.060 next 100 TB, $0.040 next 350 TB, and as low as $0.020/GB above 5 PB. CloudFront prices by edge location, so Asia, India, South America, and Africa cost more per GB.
after 1 TB free
10-50 TB band
50-150 TB band
to 500 TB, then lower
US & Europe edge rates · first 1 TB + 10M requests free each month. See the full per-region table, request fees, and price classes on the CloudFront pricing reference →, or the CloudFront vs S3 breakeven →. Source →
[04]Hidden AWS surcharges to add on
Headline egress rates are only part of the story. Most AWS workloads pay 50-200% more than the headline because of these. See the hidden costs page for full detail. Inbound data transfer is the cheap direction: AWS ingress is free, with four processing-fee exceptions.
NAT Gateway processing
$0.045/GBNAT Gateway hourly
$0.045/hrCross-AZ each way
$0.01/GBALB / NLB processing
$0.008/GBInterface VPC endpoints
$0.01/GB + $0.01/hr/AZPublic IPv4 address
$0.005/hr each[05]Worked example, 50 TB / month SaaS
A SaaS app serving 50 TB / month from us-east-1 with multi-AZ EC2 + RDS, NAT Gateway egress, and an ALB. The headline egress is $4,400. The actual bill is closer to $7,000.
Versus headline egress of $4,403, a 71% gap caused by hidden surcharges.
How does AWS compare?
Azure undercuts AWS at every tier. GCP is more expensive at headline; its Standard Tier is the cheaper option. Cloudflare R2 is zero. Compare like-for-like volumes across all of them.
[06]Frequently asked
Q.01How much does AWS charge for egress?
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AWS charges $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB of internet egress per month, $0.085 per GB for the next 40 TB, $0.07 per GB for the next 100 TB, and $0.05 per GB above 150 TB. The first 100 GB per month is free across all regions and services. Additional charges apply for cross-AZ transfer ($0.01/GB each way), cross-region transfer ($0.01-0.02/GB), and NAT Gateway processing ($0.045/GB).
Q.02Is AWS bandwidth pricing the same as egress cost?
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Yes. AWS does not have a separate bandwidth meter. What people call AWS bandwidth cost, data transfer pricing, and egress fees are all the same line item: data transfer out to the internet, billed at $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB per month after a 100 GB free allowance, then $0.085 per GB to 50 TB, $0.07 per GB to 150 TB, and $0.05 per GB above that. The only true bandwidth-style charges are capacity fees on dedicated links such as Direct Connect port-hours and VPN Gateway hourly rates, which are separate from the per-GB transfer cost. Inbound data transfer (ingress) to AWS is free.
Q.03How much is AWS CloudFront data transfer out per GB in 2026?
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CloudFront data transfer out to the internet costs $0.085 per GB for the first 10 TB per month in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe, after a 1 TB always-free allowance. It then drops to $0.080 per GB for the next 40 TB, $0.060 for the next 100 TB, $0.040 for the next 350 TB, $0.030 to 1 PB, $0.025 to 5 PB, and $0.020 above 5 PB. CloudFront prices by edge location, so Asia ($0.120/GB), India ($0.109/GB), South America ($0.110/GB), and Africa ($0.140/GB) cost more in their entry tier. Verified from aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/pay-as-you-go on 2026-08-04.
Q.04Is S3 to CloudFront egress free?
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Yes. AWS does not charge for data transfer from S3 to CloudFront when the CloudFront distribution and S3 bucket are in the same AWS account. This is a deliberate incentive to use CloudFront for content delivery. CloudFront then has its own outbound pricing tiers (slightly cheaper than direct S3 egress at scale), so combining S3 + CloudFront is the standard pattern for cost-optimised content distribution.
Q.05What is AWS cross-region transfer cost?
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AWS cross-region data transfer typically costs $0.02 per GB, dropping to $0.01-0.015 per GB on certain corridors (intra-continent transfer is cheaper than inter-continent). The exact rate depends on source and destination region. For example, us-east-1 to us-west-2 is $0.02/GB. This is in addition to internet egress, not instead of it. Cross-region replication for DR doubles your data transfer bill.
Q.06What is the AWS free tier for data transfer?
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AWS provides 100 GB per month of free outbound data transfer to the internet, aggregated across all regions and services (S3, EC2, RDS, Lambda, API Gateway, etc.). This is always-free and not part of the 12-month introductory free tier. CloudFront has its own, larger always-free tier of 1 TB per month of data transfer out plus 10 million HTTP/HTTPS requests, also permanent rather than 12-month, since the December 2021 free-tier expansion.
Q.07Does AWS charge for traffic between EC2 instances in the same AZ?
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Traffic between EC2 instances in the same AZ using private IP addresses is free. However, traffic between AZs costs $0.01/GB in each direction ($0.02/GB round trip). Public IP traffic, even within the same AZ, also incurs charges. Most production architectures use multiple AZs for high availability, so cross-AZ charges typically apply to a significant portion of internal traffic.
Q.08Does AWS waive egress fees for migration?
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Since 2024, AWS provides free outbound data transfer for customers leaving AWS to a different cloud or on-premises, under specific conditions tied to the EU Data Act. The waiver requires advance notice, the data must be transferred within a specified window, and is intended for full-account migrations rather than ongoing cross-cloud architectures. Read the announcement carefully, the conditions are narrower than the headlines suggest.