Amazon Lightsail pricing calculator
Instances, Containers & Databases. 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 Lightsail pricing works
What you pay for
- Fixed monthly bundles for instances (vCPU, RAM, SSD and a data transfer allowance), prorated by the hour.
- Managed database bundles (standard or high availability), container service nodes, load balancers ($18/month here).
- Add-ons: block storage ($0.10/GB-month), snapshots ($0.05/GB-month), object storage and CDN bundles.
- Data transfer above the bundle allowance, and public IPv4 on IPv4 bundles (IPv6-only bundles are cheaper).
Common cost traps
- Stopped instances are still billed; only deleting the instance stops the charge.
- Snapshots, static IPs that are not attached, and unattached block storage keep billing.
- Outbound transfer above the bundle allowance is billed per GB and varies by Region.
- Bundles cannot be resized in place; moving up means snapshot and relaunch, so teams often over-buy early.
Ways to reduce cost
- Start on the smallest bundle that fits and move up via snapshot only when metrics show sustained load.
- Use IPv6-only bundles where clients support it to save the IPv4 premium.
- Delete old manual snapshots and release unused static IPs.
- When you outgrow fixed bundles (autoscaling, private networking, Savings Plans), compare with EC2.
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. Lightsail runs its own trial rather than the EC2 allowance: selected Linux/Windows instance bundles, the Micro container service and the $15 database bundle have been free for up to 90 days for new Lightsail customers (check the current offer on the pricing page). Data transfer within the bundle allowance is included.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover Amazon Lightsail?
Lightsail bundles (instances, managed databases, containers, load balancers, object storage, CDN) are billed as normal AWS usage and are offset by promotional and Activate 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
- Third-party software licences sold through AWS Marketplace or vendor blueprints that bill separately.
- 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 | $12.00 | 833.3 mo. | 2,083.3 mo. | 8,333.3 mo. |
| Medium | $96.00 | 104.2 mo. | 260.4 mo. | 1,041.7 mo. |
| Large | $772.00 | 13.0 mo. | 32.4 mo. | 129.5 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
One Linux 2 GB instance ($12 bundle) for a small site | Linux 2 GB / 2 vCPU / 60 GB bundle: 1 instance-month x $12 = $12.00 | Total ~$12.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
Two 4 GB instances behind a Lightsail load balancer, one 2 GB managed database (standard) | Linux 4 GB bundle: 2 instance-months x $24 = $48.00; Load balancer: 1 month x $18 = $18.00; Managed database 2 GB (standard): 1 month x $30 = $30.00 | Total ~$96.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
Six 16 GB instances, load balancer, 8 GB high-availability database, 200 GB block storage | Linux 16 GB / 4 vCPU bundle: 6 instance-months x $84 = $504.00; Load balancer: 1 month x $18 = $18.00; Managed database 8 GB (high availability): 1 month x $230 = $230.00; Extra block storage: 200 GB-month x $0.1 = $20.00 | Total ~$772.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
Amazon Lightsail pricing FAQ
Is a stopped Lightsail instance free?
No. Lightsail bills an instance until it is deleted, whether running or stopped.
What happens if I exceed the bundle data transfer allowance?
Extra outbound transfer is billed per GB at the Region rate. Inbound transfer and transfer within the allowance are included.
Do credits cover Lightsail?
Yes, Lightsail is ordinary AWS usage. Credits offset bundle charges, add-ons and overage like any other eligible service.
When should I move from Lightsail to EC2?
When you need autoscaling, larger or GPU instances, Savings Plans, private subnets with NAT, or fine-grained IAM and VPC control.
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 lightsail (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ before publishing.