AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) pricing calculator
Replication Servers & Staging Costs. 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 AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) pricing works
What you pay for
- Per source server: free for 2,160 hours (90 days of continuous replication), then about $0.042 per server-hour.
- Replication servers (EC2 instances in a staging subnet) and staging EBS volumes billed at normal EC2/EBS rates.
- EBS snapshots for point-in-time recovery, test and cutover instances, and data transfer into AWS (free) or across Regions.
Common cost traps
- The 90 free days are counted per server; servers left replicating after cutover start billing $0.042/hour.
- Replication servers, staging volumes and snapshots keep billing until you finalize or disconnect the source server.
- Test instances launched for validation are full EC2 instances and keep billing if not terminated.
- Large initial syncs over VPN can take long enough to eat into the free period.
Ways to reduce cost
- Plan waves so each server is cut over well inside 90 days.
- Mark servers as archived/disconnected after cutover to stop replication and clean up staging resources.
- Use smaller replication instances and st1/sc1 staging storage where throughput allows.
- Use Direct Connect or more bandwidth for large initial syncs.
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. Each source server gets 2,160 free MGN hours (90 days of replication) regardless of account plan; this is a service-specific allowance, not a Free Tier offer. The EC2 and EBS resources MGN launches are always billed.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)?
MGN service fees and the resources it creates in your account (replication servers, staging EBS volumes, snapshots, test and cutover instances) are eligible usage and are offset by credits. AWS also runs migration-specific credit programmes (for example MAP) with their own terms. 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
- AWS Professional Services or partner migration services.
- Software licences on source servers that you bring yourself.
- 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 | $208.48 | 48.0 mo. | 119.9 mo. | 479.7 mo. |
| Medium | $1,207.97 | 8.3 mo. | 20.7 mo. | 82.8 mo. |
| Large | $6,556.36 | 1.5 mo. | 3.8 mo. | 15.3 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
5 servers replicating continuously after the 90 free days: 1 t3.small replication server, 500 GB staging gp3 | MGN per-server fee (AWS Price List offer AWSApplicationMigrationSvc): 3,650 server-hours x $0.042 = $153.30; Replication server t3.small: 730 hours x $0.0208 = $15.18; Staging storage gp3: 500 GB-month x $0.08 = $40.00 | Total ~$208.48/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
25 servers after the free period, 2 t3.large replication servers, 4 TB staging gp3 | MGN per-server fee (AWS Price List offer AWSApplicationMigrationSvc): 18,250 server-hours x $0.042 = $766.50; Replication server t3.large: 1,460 hours x $0.0832 = $121.47; Staging storage gp3: 4,000 GB-month x $0.08 = $320.00 | Total ~$1,207.97/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
150 servers after the free period, 10 t3.large replication servers, 30 TB staging (st1) | MGN per-server fee (AWS Price List offer AWSApplicationMigrationSvc): 109,500 server-hours x $0.042 = $4,599.00; Replication server t3.large: 7,300 hours x $0.0832 = $607.36; Staging storage st1: 30,000 GB-month x $0.045 = $1,350.00 | Total ~$6,556.36/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) pricing FAQ
Is MGN free?
The service fee is free for 90 days (2,160 hours) per source server. EC2 replication servers, EBS staging storage and snapshots are billed from day one.
What happens after 90 days?
Replication continues and the server is billed about $0.042 per hour (roughly $30.66/month) until you stop replication.
Do credits cover the EC2 and EBS that MGN launches?
Yes. They are normal EC2 and EBS usage in your account.
How do I stop all MGN charges after cutover?
Finalize cutover, then disconnect and archive the source server so MGN removes replication resources; check for leftover snapshots and test instances.
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
- The $0.042 per server-hour fee was taken from the AWS Price List offer AWSApplicationMigrationSvc (us-east-1) because the local data set does not contain it.
- Runway prices come from the calculator repository snapshot rate card mgn (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/application-migration-service/pricing/ before publishing.