AWS Shield pricing calculator
Shield Advanced Cost Estimator. 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 Shield pricing works
What you pay for
- Shield Standard: no charge, automatic.
- Shield Advanced: $3,000 per month per payer account (organization), 1-year commitment, auto-renews.
- Usage fee per GB of data transfer out from protected CloudFront, Global Accelerator (from $0.025/GB) and regional resources ELB/EC2 ($0.05/GB); Route 53 has no usage fee.
- Includes WAF fees for protected resources up to 50 B requests/month at default WCU; Bot/Fraud Control and extra WCU still billed.
Common cost traps
- The 1-year commitment means cancelling early still bills the remaining months.
- Shield Response Team access needs Business or Enterprise Support, which credits do not cover.
- Protecting both CloudFront and the ALB behind it bills data transfer twice; protect only CloudFront if all traffic goes through it.
Ways to reduce cost
- Subscribe once at the payer level; the fee covers all linked accounts.
- Protect the edge (CloudFront/Global Accelerator) rather than every origin.
- Use the included WAF allowance instead of paying separately.
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. Shield Standard is free for everyone. Shield Advanced has no free tier and is far beyond the $200 new-account credit; it is generally eligible for promotional credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS Shield?
Shield Standard is free. Shield Advanced monthly subscription fees and data-transfer-out usage fees are AWS service charges and are generally offset by credits; there is no upfront fee, but a 1-year commitment applies. 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 | $3,025.00 | 3.3 mo. | 8.3 mo. | 33.1 mo. |
| Medium | $3,500.00 | 2.9 mo. | 7.1 mo. | 28.6 mo. |
| Large | $8,500.00 | 1.2 mo. | 2.9 mo. | 11.8 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
Shield Advanced subscription, CloudFront with 1 TB data transfer out | Shield Advanced subscription: 1 months x $3,000 = $3,000.00; Shield DTO (CloudFront): 1,000 GB tiered (1,000 @ $0.025) = $25.00 | Total ~$3,025.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
Subscription, 10 TB via CloudFront, 5 TB via ALB | Shield Advanced subscription: 1 months x $3,000 = $3,000.00; Shield DTO (CloudFront): 10,000 GB tiered (10,000 @ $0.025) = $250.00; Shield DTO (regional): 5,000 GB tiered (5,000 @ $0.05) = $250.00 | Total ~$3,500.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
Subscription, 200 TB via CloudFront, 20 TB regional | Shield Advanced subscription: 1 months x $3,000 = $3,000.00; Shield DTO (CloudFront): 200,000 GB tiered (100,000 @ $0.025; 100,000 @ $0.02) = $4,500.00; Shield DTO (regional): 20,000 GB tiered (20,000 @ $0.05) = $1,000.00 | Total ~$8,500.00/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS Shield pricing FAQ
How much is Shield Advanced?
$3,000 per month per organization with a 1-year commitment, plus per-GB data transfer usage fees.
Is Shield Standard free?
Yes, it is automatic for all AWS customers.
Do credits cover Shield Advanced?
The monthly fee and usage fees are AWS service charges and are generally eligible, but $36,000 of commitment can consume a large credit grant. Confirm with AWS before subscribing on credits.
Does it include WAF?
Yes, WAF ACL, rule and request fees on protected resources up to 50 B requests per month at default WCU.
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
- Whether promotional credits (including Activate) apply to the Shield Advanced subscription fee is not stated explicitly in the credit terms; confirm before relying on it.
- Runway prices come from the calculator repository snapshot rate card shield (no AWS Price List mapping in the build). Confirm the main unit prices on https://aws.amazon.com/shield/pricing/ before publishing.