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 →
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.
[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 ~10 TB/mo. |
| 08 | VPN Gateway | $0.05/hr + egress | Adds up; consider Direct Connect at scale. |
[03]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.
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[04]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 but offers free cross-zone traffic. Cloudflare R2 is zero. Compare like-for-like volumes across all of them.
[05]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 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.03What 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.04What 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, CloudFront, etc.). This is always-free and not part of the 12-month introductory free tier. CloudFront separately offers 1 TB per month of data transfer out free for the first 12 months as part of the AWS Free Tier introductory programme.
Q.05Does 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.06Does 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.