Amazon Inspector pricing calculator
EC2, ECR & Lambda Security Scans. 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 Inspector pricing works
What you pay for
- EC2: per instance-hour scanned (agent-based $0.00174, agentless $0.00243; about $1.27 / $1.77 per instance-month).
- ECR: $0.09 per image initial scan, $0.01 per automated rescan; CI/CD scans $0.03 per image.
- Lambda: standard scanning per function-hour; code scanning per function-hour on top; CIS assessments $0.03 each.
Common cost traps
- Continuous ECR rescanning of thousands of old images adds steady cost; set the rescan duration.
- Agentless scanning costs more per hour than agent-based.
- Enabling org-wide multiplies across every account and Region.
Ways to reduce cost
- Set ECR rescan duration to 14 or 30 days.
- Use agent-based scanning where SSM Agent is already installed.
- Compare with Security Hub Essentials pricing if you run Security Hub.
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. All accounts new to Inspector get a 15-day free trial. No always-free allowance. If Security Hub Essentials is enabled, Inspector scanning moves into Security Hub resource-unit pricing.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover Amazon Inspector?
Inspector EC2, ECR and Lambda scanning and CIS assessments 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 | $29.79 | 335.7 mo. | 839.2 mo. | 3,356.8 mo. |
| Medium | $577.56 | 17.3 mo. | 43.3 mo. | 173.1 mo. |
| Large | $5,556.62 | 1.8 mo. | 4.5 mo. | 18.0 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
10 EC2 instances 24/7, 100 new ECR images + 200 rescans, 20 Lambda functions | EC2 scanning: 7,300 instance-hours x $0.00174 = $12.70; ECR initial scans: 100 images x $0.09 = $9.00; ECR rescans: 200 rescans x $0.01 = $2.00; Lambda standard: 14,600 function-hours x $0.000417 = $6.09 | Total ~$29.79/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
200 EC2 instances, 1,000 new images + 5,000 rescans, 200 Lambda functions with code scanning | EC2 scanning: 146,000 instance-hours x $0.00174 = $254.04; ECR initial scans: 1,000 images x $0.09 = $90.00; ECR rescans: 5,000 rescans x $0.01 = $50.00; Lambda standard: 146,000 function-hours x $0.000417 = $60.88; Lambda code scanning: 146,000 function-hours x $0.00084 = $122.64 | Total ~$577.56/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
2,000 EC2 instances (agentless), 10,000 images + 50,000 rescans, 2,000 Lambda functions | EC2 agentless scanning: 1,460,000 instance-hours x $0.00243 = $3,547.80; ECR initial scans: 10,000 images x $0.09 = $900.00; ECR rescans: 50,000 rescans x $0.01 = $500.00; Lambda standard: 1,460,000 function-hours x $0.000417 = $608.82 | Total ~$5,556.62/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
Amazon Inspector pricing FAQ
How much does EC2 scanning cost?
About $1.27 per instance per month agent-based or $1.77 agentless in us-east-1.
How are container images billed?
$0.09 per initial scan and $0.01 per rescan.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, accounts new to Inspector get a 15-day free trial.
Do credits cover Inspector?
Yes, it is 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
- Runway prices come from the calculator repository snapshot rate card inspector (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/inspector/pricing/ before publishing.