AWS IoT Greengrass pricing calculator
Core Devices & IoT Core. 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 Greengrass pricing works
What you pay for
- $0.16 per active core device per month in us-east-1 (a device is active in any month it authenticates with AWS).
- IoT Core connection minutes and messages generated by Greengrass components (deployment agent, shadows, subscriptions).
- Other services the edge apps use (S3, Kinesis, DynamoDB, Lambda), plus data transfer.
Common cost traps
- A retired device that still authenticates keeps billing; AWS requires a full uninstall (stop the nucleus and delete the core device).
- Large fleets generate IoT Core connection-minute and message charges that can exceed the Greengrass fee.
- Frequent shadow syncs and chatty telemetry increase IoT Core messaging and downstream ingestion costs.
Ways to reduce cost
- Aggregate data at the edge and send summaries rather than raw readings.
- Clean up decommissioned core devices fully.
- Contact AWS for volume pricing on large fleets or annual commitments, as the pricing page suggests.
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: the first three core devices that connect each month are free for 12 months. New-plan accounts pay from Free Tier credits. Local device-to-core traffic is free.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS IoT Greengrass?
Greengrass active core device fees and the IoT Core connectivity and messaging they generate 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
- Device hardware and connectivity (SIM/ISP) costs outside AWS.
- 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 | $8.35 | 1,197.6 mo. | 2,994.0 mo. | 11,976.0 mo. |
| Medium | $175.77 | 56.9 mo. | 142.2 mo. | 568.9 mo. |
| Large | $4,216.16 | 2.4 mo. | 5.9 mo. | 23.7 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
50 active core devices, 2 IoT Core connections each 24/7 | Active core devices: 50 device-months x $0.16 = $8.00; IoT Core connection minutes: 4.38 million minutes x $0.08 = $0.35 | Total ~$8.35/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
1,000 active core devices, 2 connections each 24/7, 12 messages/hour per device | Active core devices: 1,000 device-months x $0.16 = $160.00; IoT Core connection minutes: 87.6 million minutes x $0.08 = $7.01; IoT Core messages: 8.76 million messages x $1 = $8.76 | Total ~$175.77/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
20,000 active core devices, 2 connections each 24/7, 60 messages/hour per device | Active core devices: 20,000 device-months x $0.16 = $3,200.00; IoT Core connection minutes: 1,752 million minutes x $0.08 = $140.16; IoT Core messages: 876 million messages x $1 = $876.00 | Total ~$4,216.16/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS IoT Greengrass pricing FAQ
When is a core device billed?
In any month it authenticates with AWS. A device that only runs locally that month is not billed.
Are devices that connect to the core locally billed?
No. Only the Greengrass core is billed; local client devices connect at no extra Greengrass charge, though their shadows may add IoT Core charges.
Is there volume pricing?
The public rate is $0.16 per device per month; AWS asks large fleets and annual-commitment customers to contact sales.
What else will I pay for?
IoT Core connection minutes and messages, and any cloud services your components call.
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 iot-greengrass (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/pricing/ before publishing.