Amazon API Gateway pricing calculator
HTTP, REST, WebSocket APIs. Estimate your costs using AWS list prices.
Estimates from AWS list prices, not an AWS quote. Discounts, taxes and credit terms may affect your bill.
01 · How Amazon API Gateway pricing works
What you pay for
- REST API requests ($3.50 per million for the first 333 M, tiered down), HTTP API requests ($1.00 per million for the first 300 M; metered in 512 KB increments).
- WebSocket messages ($1.00 per million, 32 KB increments) and connection minutes ($0.25 per million).
- Optional REST cache billed per hour by size ($0.02/hour for 0.5 GB up to several dollars for large caches); developer portals; data transfer out.
Common cost traps
- REST APIs cost 3.5x HTTP APIs per request; many simple proxies do not need REST-only features.
- Caches bill every hour once enabled, even for idle stages.
- Private APIs need interface VPC endpoints, billed per AZ-hour.
- Large payloads count as multiple requests (HTTP API 512 KB, WebSocket 32 KB increments).
- The backend (Lambda, NAT, logs) usually costs more than API Gateway itself; access logs and execution logs go to CloudWatch.
Ways to reduce cost
- Use HTTP APIs unless you need REST features such as usage plans, API keys, request validation or caching.
- Turn caches off on non-production stages.
- Put CloudFront in front for cacheable GET endpoints.
- Keep execution logging at ERROR level in production.
Free Tier & account eligibility
Free Tier depends on account age. Accounts created on or after 15 July 2025 get a $100 sign-up credit plus up to $100 more for completing onboarding activities; on the Free plan these last 6 months (or until used up), on the Paid plan unused Free Tier credits stay usable for 12 months from sign-up. Accounts created before 15 July 2025 keep the legacy Free Tier (12-month offers plus always-free offers). Always-free offers apply on both plans. Legacy accounts: 1 M REST API calls, 1 M HTTP API calls, 1 M WebSocket messages and 750,000 connection minutes per month for 12 months. New-plan accounts pay from Free Tier credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover Amazon API Gateway?
API Gateway REST, HTTP and WebSocket requests, caching, portals and data transfer are eligible usage and are offset by credits. General rules: credits only offset charges from the billing cycle in which they were applied onward (never past bills), they apply only to the services listed on the credit in Billing and Cost Management > Credits, they expire on the date shown there, and accounts on the AWS Free plan cannot receive Activate credits until they upgrade to the Paid plan.
Check my creditsExcluded charges & conditions
- Upfront payments for Savings Plans and Reserved Instances (All Upfront, and the upfront part of Partial Upfront). The recurring hourly fee of a No Upfront commitment is billed as normal usage and can be offset.
- AWS Marketplace charges (Activate credits make an exception for third-party foundation models used through Amazon Bedrock).
- AWS Enterprise Support, Enterprise On-Ramp, Unified Operations, resold support and partner-led support.
- Amazon Route 53 domain name registration and transfer fees.
- Taxes (sales, use, VAT and similar), AWS Professional Services, Training and Certification, Mechanical Turk, AWS Managed Services, and any use for cryptocurrency mining.
Illustrative credit runway
Single-service examples from the supplied data, not your calculator result. Months = credit amount ÷ monthly cost, before credit expiry. Credits can expire before these theoretical months are used; coverage and other AWS services can shorten runway.
| Usage profile | Monthly estimate | $10,000 | $25,000 | $100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | $5.00 | 2,000.0 mo. | 5,000.0 mo. | 20,000.0 mo. |
| Medium | $257.74 | 38.8 mo. | 97.0 mo. | 388.0 mo. |
| Large | $2,196.00 | 4.6 mo. | 11.4 mo. | 45.5 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
HTTP API, 5 M requests/month | HTTP API requests: 5 million x $1 = $5.00 | Total ~$5.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
REST API 60 M requests with a 1.6 GB cache 24/7, plus 20 M HTTP API requests | REST API requests: 60 million x $3.5 = $210.00; Cache 1.6 GB: 730 hours x $0.038 = $27.74; HTTP API requests: 20 million x $1 = $20.00 | Total ~$257.74/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
REST API 300 M requests, 6.1 GB cache 24/7, WebSocket 500 M messages and 2 B connection-minutes | REST API requests: 300 million x $3.5 = $1,050.00; Cache 6.1 GB: 730 hours x $0.2 = $146.00; WebSocket messages: 500 million x $1 = $500.00; WebSocket connection minutes: 2,000 million x $0.25 = $500.00 | Total ~$2,196.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
Amazon API Gateway pricing FAQ
HTTP API or REST API?
HTTP APIs cost $1.00 per million requests versus $3.50 for REST in us-east-1. Choose REST only for features HTTP APIs lack, such as caching, usage plans or request validation.
Is the API Gateway free tier still available?
The 1 M calls per month offer applies to accounts created before 15 July 2025 during their first 12 months. Newer accounts use Free Tier credits.
How is a WebSocket API billed?
Per message (in 32 KB chunks) and per connection minute.
Do credits cover API Gateway?
Yes, all API Gateway charges are eligible usage.
05 · Sources & estimate notes
Content pack dated 2026-10-19. Calculator rates remain their existing snapshots; this content update is not a price refresh.
Verification notes
- Only data-transfer tiers of apigateway were refreshed from the AWS Price List; service rates are the repository snapshot. Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/pricing/.