AWS Transit Gateway pricing calculator
Estimate Attachment and Data Processing 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 Transit Gateway pricing works
What you pay for
- Per attachment hour ($0.05 in us-east-1) for each VPC, VPN, Direct Connect gateway, peering or Connect attachment.
- Per GB of data processed ($0.02), charged on traffic sent into the transit gateway (peering traffic processing differs).
- Inter-Region data transfer for peering, and the VPN/Direct Connect charges themselves.
Common cost traps
- Attachments bill per hour even with no traffic: 20 VPCs is about $730/month before data.
- Every GB between VPCs pays $0.02 processing plus cross-AZ transfer where applicable; VPC peering has no processing fee.
- Centralised inspection routes traffic through the TGW twice (to the inspection VPC and back).
Ways to reduce cost
- Use VPC peering for a few high-volume VPC pairs.
- Consolidate small VPCs or use shared VPCs (RAM subnet sharing) to reduce attachments.
- Keep high-volume flows (for example S3) on local endpoints instead of hairpinning through a central VPC.
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. No Free Tier for Transit Gateway; new-plan accounts can pay from Free Tier credits.
02 · AWS credits & runway
Do credits cover AWS Transit Gateway?
Transit Gateway attachment hours (VPC, VPN, Direct Connect, peering, Connect) and data processing 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 | $119.50 | 83.7 mo. | 209.2 mo. | 836.8 mo. |
| Medium | $606.30 | 16.5 mo. | 41.2 mo. | 164.9 mo. |
| Large | $3,982.50 | 2.5 mo. | 6.3 mo. | 25.1 mo. |
Small profile assumptions
3 VPC attachments, 500 GB processed | VPC attachments: 2,190 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $109.50; Data processed: 500 GB x $0.02 = $10.00 | Total ~$119.50/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Medium profile assumptions
10 VPC attachments + 1 VPN attachment, 10 TB processed | VPC attachments: 7,300 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $365.00; VPN attachment: 730 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $36.50; Data processed: 10,240 GB x $0.02 = $204.80 | Total ~$606.30/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
Large profile assumptions
50 VPC attachments, 2 Direct Connect attachments, 1 peering attachment, 100 TB processed | VPC attachments: 36,500 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $1,825.00; Direct Connect attachments: 1,460 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $73.00; Peering attachment: 730 attachment-hours x $0.05 = $36.50; Data processed: 102,400 GB x $0.02 = $2,048.00 | Total ~$3,982.50/month, us-east-1 on-demand list prices, before Free Tier, taxes and support.
04 · Questions
AWS Transit Gateway pricing FAQ
Is Transit Gateway cheaper than VPC peering?
Not per GB: TGW adds $0.02/GB processing and $0.05 per attachment-hour, while peering has no processing fee. TGW is simpler to operate once you have many VPCs.
Am I billed for idle attachments?
Yes, each attachment bills per hour from creation until deletion.
Who pays for data processing?
The account that owns the attachment sending traffic into the transit gateway is charged.
Do credits cover Transit Gateway?
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
- Billing of data processing to the sender-attachment owner is described from general knowledge; confirm on the pricing page.