AWS CloudFormation pricing calculator
Registry Extensions & Hook 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 CloudFormation pricing works
What you pay for
- No charge for stacks using AWS::*, Alexa::* and Custom::* resource types.
- Third-party resource types and Hooks: $0.0009 per handler operation and $0.00008 per second beyond 30 seconds.
- Resources created by stacks are billed by their services; S3 template storage.
Common cost traps
- CloudFormation itself is rarely the cost; the resources a stack creates are.
- Stacks left in test accounts keep their resources billing.
- Hooks run on every stack operation and are billed per handler operation.
Ways to reduce cost
- Delete test stacks automatically (for example with TTL tags and cleanup jobs).
- Scope Hooks to the resource types that need them.
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. Always free on both plans: 1,000 handler operations per month per account for third-party resources and Hooks. AWS resource types are always free.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS CloudFormation?
CloudFormation charges for third-party resource types and Hooks (handler operations and duration) are eligible usage and are offset by credits. Resources created by stacks bill under their own services. 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 | $1.80 | 5,555.6 mo. | 13,888.9 mo. | 55,555.6 mo. |
| Medium | $46.60 | 214.6 mo. | 536.5 mo. | 2,145.9 mo. |
| Large | $466.00 | 21.5 mo. | 53.6 mo. | 214.6 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
Only AWS resource types (no charge) plus 2,000 third-party handler operations | Handler operations: 2,000 operations x $0.0009 = $1.80 | Total ~$1.80/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
50,000 handler operations (third-party resources and Hooks), 20,000 seconds over 30 s | Handler operations: 50,000 operations x $0.0009 = $45.00; Duration over 30 s: 20,000 seconds x $0.00008 = $1.60 | Total ~$46.60/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
500,000 handler operations, 200,000 seconds over 30 s | Handler operations: 500,000 operations x $0.0009 = $450.00; Duration over 30 s: 200,000 seconds x $0.00008 = $16.00 | Total ~$466.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS CloudFormation pricing FAQ
Is CloudFormation free?
For AWS resource types, yes. You pay only for third-party resource types and Hooks beyond 1,000 handler operations per month.
What is a handler operation?
A create, read, update, delete or list action performed by a resource provider or Hook.
Do credits cover CloudFormation?
Yes, the CloudFormation charges and the resources created are eligible usage.
Why did deleting a stack not stop all charges?
Resources with DeletionPolicy Retain, and snapshots taken on delete, remain and keep billing.
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 cloudformation (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/pricing/ before publishing.