How can I estimate the costs of using Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Summary

AWS provides a convenient online calculator tool to estimate monthly costs

Body

Whether you are running a single instance or dozens of individual services, you can estimate your monthly bill using the AWS Pricing Calculator. The calculator allows you to estimate individual or multiple prices and use templates to appraise complete solutions.

Table of Contents

AWS Pricing Calculator

The AWS Pricing Calculator is a web-based planning tool that you can use to create estimates for your AWS use cases. You can use it to model your solutions before building them, explore the AWS service price points, and review the calculations behind your estimates. You can also use it to help you plan how you spend, find cost saving opportunities, and make informed decisions when using Amazon Web Services. The AWS Pricing Calculator is useful for those who have never used AWS, as well as for those who want to reorganize or expand their AWS usage. You don't need any experience with the cloud or AWS to use the AWS Pricing Calculator.

Features of the AWS Pricing Calculator

With the AWS Pricing Calculator, you can do the following tasks:

  • View transparent prices – See the calculations behind the estimated prices for your service configurations. You can view price estimates by service or by groups of services to analyze your architecture costs.

  • Use groups for hierarchical estimates – Sort your estimates into groups to align with your architecture for clear service cost analysis.

  • Share your estimates – Save the link to each estimate to share or revisit at a later time. Estimates are saved to the AWS public servers.

  • Export your estimates – Export your estimates in CSV or PDF format to share locally with your stakeholders.

Pricing for the AWS Pricing Calculator

The AWS Pricing Calculator is provided at no charge. It provides an estimate of your AWS fees and charges, but the estimate doesn't include any taxes that might apply. The AWS Pricing Calculator provides pricing details for only the information you enter. If the prices on the marketing pages are different from the prices that the AWS Pricing Calculator uses, AWS honors the prices from the marketing pages. For more information about AWS service pricing, see Cloud Services Pricing.

Prerequisites for Using the AWS Pricing Calculator

You don't need an AWS account or in-depth knowledge of AWS to use AWS Pricing Calculator.

For best results, we recommend that you have a plan for how you want to use AWS before starting your estimate. For example, decide whether you want to break out your estimate by cost center, by products to run on AWS, or by Regional stacks. Then, you can use the Group feature to organize your estimates.

Accessing AWS Pricing Calculator

AWS Pricing Calculator is available through a web-based console at calculator.aws

Using the AWS Pricing Calculator Console

The AWS Pricing Calculator consists of four major console pages.

           Landing page

Add Service page

  • You navigated to the Add Service page when you begin creating an estimate. This page has calculators for all services that AWS Pricing Calculator supports. There's a calculator for each service, and a single calculator supports multiple services in some use cases. Use the search menu to enter service names or keywords. You can also find more information about each service through the Product page links.

Configure calculator page

  • Use the configure calculator page to enter your customized details for your service calculator. Information includes a description (optional), choosing a AWS Region to create an estimate for, and other inputs for the service based on your use case. View your estimate results and review the calculations behind each estimate. You can add the estimate of your service to the My estimates page using the Add to my estimate at the end of the page.

My estimate page

  • Estimate summary section: This section shows your estimates in Upfront cost, Monthly cost, and your Total 12 months cost. The total 12 months cost is the sum of all estimates and groups. It combines the upfront and monthly costs. The upfront cost shows how much you're estimated to pay when you set up your services. Monthly costs are how much you're estimated to spend for ongoing months.
     
  • Groups and My estimate section: This is your working section that shows a list of your service calculators. You can add more services here, and use the search bar to enter keywords to find your previous service estimates.
     
  • On this page, you can export your estimates to CSV or PDF files, share your estimate links, and navigate to the AWS console to sign in or create an account.

Create an Estimate

When you generate an estimate, you can either add services directly to your estimate or create a group and add the services to your group. This section shows how to set up a group with an Amazon EC2 instance that you can use to perform tasks such as run a small program or host a website. To get started, create your estimate using the following steps.

To create your estimate

Open AWS Pricing Calculator at https://calculator.aws/#/

  1.  Choose Create estimate.
  2. On the Add service page, find the service that you want to choose and then choose Configure. For more information, see Configure a service.
  3. Add a Description for the estimated service.
  4. Select a Region.
  5. Enter your settings in the Service settings section.
  6. Choose Add to my estimate.

Configure a Service

This section shows how to configure a service you're creating an estimate for. In this example, we're adding Amazon EC2 using the Amazon EC2 Quick estimate option.

To configure a service for your estimate

Open the Add service page at https://calculator.aws/#/addService

  1. Enter Amazon EC2 in the search bar and choose Configure.

  2. In the Description field, enter a description for your estimate.

  3. Choose a Region.

  4. The Quick estimate view is preloaded with default values, so you can see a starting estimate without adding or changing any information. You can change any of the values for the following parameters. Otherwise, you can also keep the defaults when they're applicable.

    • The operation system

    • The Amazon EC2 instance: Search by instance name, or by filters (vCPU, Memory, ECU, and GPU parameters)

    • The number of Amazon EC2 instances

    • The utilization or expected usage of Amazon EC2 instances

    • The pricing model

    • The reservation term

    • The payment options

  5. (Optional) Choose Show calculations to view the calculations behind your estimate.

  6. In the Amazon EBS section, choose the storage for each Amazon EC2 instance, and enter the storage amount.

    If you aren't adding Amazon EBS volumes, enter 0.

  7. Choose Add to my estimate.

Add a Group (Optional)

Use groups to organize services together. You can add one or more services to each group. You can also use groups to organize your estimate in different ways. For example, you can organize it by cost center, service stack, product architecture, or client.

For more information about groups, see Using groups to organize your estimates.

To add a group to your estimate

Open the My estimate page at https://calculator.aws/#/estimate

  1. Choose Create group.

  2. Enter a group name.

  3. Choose Create group.

Add More Services

You can add more services to generate a complete estimate for your architecture. For process examples and tutorials that show estimates for specific services, see Estimate examples for services.

To add more services to your estimate

  1. Open the My estimate page at https://calculator.aws/#/estimate.
  2. Choose a group from the left panel to add your service to.
  3. Choose Add Service.
  4. Search for a service and choose Configure.
  5. Enter the service parameters and choose Add to my estimate.
  6. Repeat as needed.

Details

Details

Article ID: 2406
Created
Thu 3/31/22 2:59 PM
Modified
Sun 5/1/22 4:50 PM

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