Amazon EBS pricing calculator
Compare All Volume Types. 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 EBS pricing works
What you pay for
- Volume storage per GB-month: gp3 $0.08, gp2 $0.10, io1/io2 $0.125, st1 $0.045, sc1 $0.015 (us-east-1), billed per second.
- Provisioned performance: gp3 IOPS above 3,000 ($0.005/IOPS-month) and throughput above 125 MB/s ($0.04/MB/s-month); io1/io2 IOPS (io2 tiered).
- Snapshots: $0.05/GB-month standard (incremental), $0.0125/GB-month archive plus retrieval; Fast Snapshot Restore per AZ-hour.
- EBS direct API calls and cross-Region snapshot copy transfer.
Common cost traps
- Volumes are billed while provisioned, even when the instance is stopped or the volume is unattached.
- gp2 ties IOPS to size; teams often over-provision gp2 for performance when gp3 would be 20% cheaper per GB with performance bought separately.
- Archived snapshots have a 90-day minimum and a per-GB retrieval fee.
- Fast Snapshot Restore is billed per snapshot per AZ-hour and is easy to leave enabled.
- io2 IOPS charges often exceed the storage charge.
Ways to reduce cost
- Migrate gp2 to gp3 (online, no downtime) and only buy the extra IOPS/throughput you need.
- Delete unattached volumes and use Data Lifecycle Manager or AWS Backup to expire snapshots.
- Archive long-retention snapshots you rarely restore.
- Use st1/sc1 for large sequential or cold data.
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: 30 GB of gp2/gp3 or magnetic storage, 1 GB of snapshots for 12 months. New-plan accounts pay from Free Tier credits. No always-free EBS allowance.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover Amazon EBS?
EBS volumes (storage, provisioned IOPS and throughput), snapshots, snapshot archive, Fast Snapshot Restore and EBS direct APIs 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 | $34.00 | 294.1 mo. | 735.3 mo. | 2,941.2 mo. |
| Medium | $521.28 | 19.2 mo. | 48.0 mo. | 191.8 mo. |
| Large | $5,524.00 | 1.8 mo. | 4.5 mo. | 18.1 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
300 GB gp3 at baseline (3,000 IOPS, 125 MB/s included), 200 GB of snapshots | gp3 storage: 300 GB-month x $0.08 = $24.00; Snapshots (standard): 200 GB-month x $0.05 = $10.00 | Total ~$34.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
4 TB gp3 with 6,000 extra IOPS and 250 MB/s extra throughput in total, 3 TB snapshots | gp3 storage: 4,096 GB-month x $0.08 = $327.68; gp3 extra IOPS: 6,000 IOPS-month x $0.005 = $30.00; gp3 extra throughput: 250 MB/s-month x $0.04 = $10.00; Snapshots (standard): 3,072 GB-month x $0.05 = $153.60 | Total ~$521.28/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
20 TB gp3, 4 TB io2 with 20,000 IOPS, 20 TB st1, 30 TB snapshots (10 TB archived) | gp3 storage: 20,480 GB-month x $0.08 = $1,638.40; io2 storage: 4,096 GB-month x $0.125 = $512.00; io2 IOPS (first 32,000 tier): 20,000 IOPS-month x $0.065 = $1,300.00; st1 storage: 20,480 GB-month x $0.045 = $921.60; Snapshots (standard): 20,480 GB-month x $0.05 = $1,024.00; Snapshots (archive): 10,240 GB-month x $0.0125 = $128.00 | Total ~$5,524.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
Amazon EBS pricing FAQ
Am I charged for a stopped instance's volume?
Yes. EBS bills for provisioned storage whether the volume is attached, detached or on a stopped instance.
Are snapshots full copies?
No. Snapshots are incremental; you pay for the changed blocks stored. Deleting one snapshot may not free much space if later snapshots reference its blocks.
What does gp3 include for free?
Every gp3 volume includes 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s of throughput. Only performance above that is charged.
Do credits cover snapshot archive retrieval?
Yes. It is EBS usage and credits offset it.
05 · Sources & estimate notes
Content pack dated 2026-10-19. Calculator rates remain their existing snapshots; this content update is not a price refresh.