AWS AppSync pricing calculator
. 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 AppSync pricing works
What you pay for
- GraphQL query and mutation operations ($4.00 per million).
- Real-time subscription updates ($2.00 per million) and connection minutes ($0.08 per million).
- AppSync Events operations ($1.00 per million) and connection minutes; optional cache instances per hour; data transfer.
Common cost traps
- Each resolver call to Lambda, DynamoDB or OpenSearch is billed by that service.
- Chatty subscriptions fan out: one mutation can produce thousands of billed real-time updates.
- Caches bill per hour whether hit or not.
Ways to reduce cost
- Use direct DynamoDB resolvers instead of Lambda where logic is simple.
- Filter subscriptions server-side to cut real-time updates.
- Consider AppSync Events for simple pub/sub (cheaper per operation than GraphQL).
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: 250,000 query/mutation operations, 250,000 real-time updates and 600,000 connection minutes per month for 12 months. New-plan accounts pay from Free Tier credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS AppSync?
AppSync GraphQL operations, real-time updates, connection minutes, AppSync Events operations and caching 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 | $25.60 | 390.6 mo. | 976.6 mo. | 3,906.3 mo. |
| Medium | $316.12 | 31.6 mo. | 79.1 mo. | 316.3 mo. |
| Large | $3,340.00 | 3.0 mo. | 7.5 mo. | 29.9 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
GraphQL API, 5 M operations, 2 M real-time updates, 20 M connection-minutes | Query/mutation operations: 5,000,000 operations x $0.000004 = $20.00; Real-time updates: 2,000,000 updates x $0.000002 = $4.00; Connection minutes: 20,000,000 minutes x $0.00000008 = $1.60 | Total ~$25.60/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
50 M operations, 30 M real-time updates, 300 M connection-minutes, small cache 24/7 | Query/mutation operations: 50,000,000 operations x $0.000004 = $200.00; Real-time updates: 30,000,000 updates x $0.000002 = $60.00; Connection minutes: 300,000,000 minutes x $0.00000008 = $24.00; Cache (smallest size): 730 hours x $0.044 = $32.12 | Total ~$316.12/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
500 M operations, 300 M real-time updates, 3 B connection-minutes, plus 500 M AppSync Events operations | Query/mutation operations: 500,000,000 operations x $0.000004 = $2,000.00; Real-time updates: 300,000,000 updates x $0.000002 = $600.00; Connection minutes: 3,000,000,000 minutes x $0.00000008 = $240.00; AppSync Events operations: 500,000,000 operations x $0.000001 = $500.00 | Total ~$3,340.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS AppSync pricing FAQ
How is a GraphQL request billed?
Each query or mutation is one operation at $4.00 per million in us-east-1, regardless of how many resolvers it uses. The data sources behind the resolvers bill separately.
What do subscriptions cost?
$2.00 per million real-time updates delivered plus $0.08 per million connection minutes.
Is AppSync Events cheaper?
Yes for simple pub/sub: $1.00 per million operations versus $4.00 for GraphQL operations.
Do credits cover AppSync?
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 appsync (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/pricing/ before publishing.