AWS IoT Core pricing calculator
Connectivity, Messaging, Shadows & Rules. 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 IoT Core pricing works
What you pay for
- Connectivity: $0.08 per million connection minutes.
- Messaging: $1.00 per million messages for the first billion (5 KB increments), tiered down to $0.70.
- Device Shadow and registry operations ($1.25 per million, 1 KB increments), rules triggered and actions ($0.15 per million each), Device Location and Device Management features.
Common cost traps
- Messages are metered in 5 KB chunks, so large payloads count several times.
- Each rule action is billed in addition to the rule trigger, and the target service (Lambda, Kinesis, DynamoDB) bills too.
- Frequent keep-alive pings and reconnect storms add connection and messaging cost.
Ways to reduce cost
- Batch readings into fewer, larger messages up to 5 KB.
- Use Basic Ingest (reserved $aws/rules topics) to skip messaging charges for data sent straight to rules.
- Pre-aggregate on devices or with Greengrass at the edge.
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 (12 months): 2,250,000 connection minutes, 500,000 messages, 225,000 shadow/registry operations, 250,000 rules triggered and 250,000 actions per month. New-plan accounts pay from Free Tier credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS IoT Core?
IoT Core connectivity, messaging, Device Shadow and registry operations, rules engine and actions, and Device Location 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 | $60.44 | 165.5 mo. | 413.6 mo. | 1,654.5 mo. |
| Medium | $1,245.38 | 8.0 mo. | 20.1 mo. | 80.3 mo. |
| Large | $5,368.40 | 1.9 mo. | 4.7 mo. | 18.6 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
1,000 devices connected 24/7, 1 message per minute each | Connection minutes: 43.8 million minutes x $0.08 = $3.50; Messages: 43.8 million x $1 = $43.80; Rules triggered: 43.8 million x $0.15 = $6.57; Rule actions: 43.8 million x $0.15 = $6.57 | Total ~$60.44/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
20,000 devices 24/7, 1 message per minute, 2 shadow updates per hour | Connection minutes: 876 million minutes x $0.08 = $70.08; Messages: 876 million x $1 = $876.00; Shadow operations: 29.2 million x $1.25 = $36.50; Rules triggered: 876 million x $0.15 = $131.40; Rule actions: 876 million x $0.15 = $131.40 | Total ~$1,245.38/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
100,000 devices 24/7, 1 message per minute (tiered), rules on every message | Connection minutes: 4,380 million minutes x $0.08 = $350.40; Messages: 4,380,000,000 messages tiered (1,000 @ $1; 3,380 @ $0.8) = $3,704.00; Rules triggered: 4,380 million x $0.15 = $657.00; Rule actions: 4,380 million x $0.15 = $657.00 | Total ~$5,368.40/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS IoT Core pricing FAQ
What is a message?
A publish or delivery of up to 5 KB. A 12 KB payload counts as three messages.
How can I avoid messaging charges?
Basic Ingest lets devices publish directly to rules without the messaging charge; you still pay rules and actions.
Is there a free tier?
Legacy accounts get a 12-month allowance (2.25 M connection minutes, 500,000 messages and more). New accounts use Free Tier credits.
Do credits cover IoT Core?
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
- Basic Ingest messaging exemption described from AWS documentation knowledge; confirm on the pricing page.
- Runway prices come from the calculator repository snapshot rate card iot-core (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core/pricing/ before publishing.