How to estimate your S3 bill
To estimate your monthly S3 cost, multiply the GB you store by your storage class's per-GB rate, add request charges per 1,000 requests, add retrieval fees for the Infrequent Access and Glacier classes, and add data transfer out beyond the first 100 GB. The calculator above does each step and shows the formula.
- Pick a region and storage classPrices differ by region, so choose the one your bucket is in. Storage class sets the per-GB, request and retrieval rates.
- Enter how much you storeUse your average stored GB for the month. If you don't know it, calculate the size of each S3 bucket or ask AI which S3 buckets are largest. For Intelligent-Tiering, add the number of objects of 128 KB or larger.
- Add your requestsEnter PUT, COPY, POST and LIST requests in one box and GET, SELECT and all other requests in the other. S3 request metrics in CloudWatch or the usage types in Cost Explorer give you real counts.
- Add data outEnter the GB you serve to the internet each month, and for the Infrequent Access and Glacier Instant Retrieval classes, the GB you read back.
- Read the breakdownEvery line shows its formula, and the total updates as you type. Untick the free 100 GB if other AWS services already use up your monthly allowance.
What drives Amazon S3 cost
An S3 bill has five main parts. Storage is billed per GB-month, so 1,000 GB kept for half a month costs the same as 500 GB kept all month. S3 Standard gets cheaper per GB above 50 TB and again above 500 TB. Requests are billed per 1,000, with writes and listings costing more than reads. Retrieval is a per-GB fee for reading data back from Standard-IA, One Zone-IA and Glacier Instant Retrieval. Data transfer out to the internet is usually the surprise: uploads are free, but downloads beyond the free 100 GB cost $0.09 per GB from us-east-1 at first. Intelligent-Tiering adds a small monitoring fee per object.
Here are the us-east-1 rates the calculator uses:
| Storage class | Storage per GB-month | PUT per 1,000 | GET per 1,000 | Retrieval | Minimums |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | $0.023 (first 50 TB), then $0.022 / $0.021 | $0.005 | $0.0004 | None | None |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | $0.023 (first 50 TB), then $0.022 / $0.021 | $0.005 | $0.0004 | None; monitoring $0.0025 per 1,000 objects | None (objects under 128 KB aren't monitored or auto-tiered) |
| S3 Standard-IA | $0.0125 | $0.01 | $0.001 | $0.01 per GB | 30 days, 128 KB per object |
| S3 One Zone-IA | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.001 | $0.01 per GB | 30 days, 128 KB per object |
| S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval | $0.004 | $0.02 | $0.01 | $0.03 per GB | 90 days, 128 KB per object |
Data transfer out to the internet from us-east-1: first 100 GB free, $0.09 per GB for the next 10 TB, $0.085 per GB for the next 40 TB, $0.07 per GB for the next 100 TB, $0.05 per GB above 150 TB. The free 100 GB is shared by all AWS services and regions on the account. The S3 data transfer out cost guide and the guide to S3 GET and PUT request costs go deeper on those two lines.
Worked example: 2 TB in S3 Standard
A web app in US East (N. Virginia) keeps 2 TB of user uploads in S3 Standard. Each month it writes 200,000 objects, serves 5 million downloads and sends 500 GB to the internet.
- Storage: 2,048 GB × $0.023 = $47.10
- PUT requests: 200,000 × $0.005 per 1,000 = $1.00
- GET requests: 5,000,000 × $0.0004 per 1,000 = $2.00
- Data transfer out: (500 GB − 100 GB free) × $0.09 = $36.00
- Total: about $86.10 a month
Data transfer is over 40% of that bill, which is typical for anything that serves files publicly. Moving the same data to Intelligent-Tiering with 1 million monitored objects adds $2.50 a month in monitoring, and it saves money once enough of those objects go untouched for 30 days. Enter these numbers in the calculator above to check them, then switch the storage class to compare.
Tips to reduce S3 cost
- Move cold data with lifecycle rules. In us-east-1, data you rarely read costs 46% less to store in Standard-IA and 83% less in Glacier Instant Retrieval than in S3 Standard. Watch the 30- and 90-day minimums and the per-GB retrieval fee.
- Use Intelligent-Tiering when access is unpredictable. It has no retrieval fees, and the monitoring fee is small for objects larger than a few hundred KB. Compare the two in the Standard vs Intelligent-Tiering guide.
- Serve public downloads through CloudFront. Transfer from S3 to CloudFront is free, and CloudFront's rates and caching usually beat serving straight from S3. More in the S3 data transfer out guide.
- Batch small objects. Millions of tiny files mean millions of PUT and GET requests, and the IA classes bill anything under 128 KB as 128 KB. The S3 request cost guide shows what request volume costs.
- Clean up what you can't see. Add lifecycle rules that abort incomplete multipart uploads and expire old object versions. Both are billed as storage but don't show up in a normal listing.
- Keep traffic inside AWS. Reach S3 from EC2 and Lambda in the same region through a gateway VPC endpoint rather than a NAT gateway, which adds a per-GB processing charge.
- Find the buckets that matter first. Most of an S3 bill usually sits in a few buckets. Ask AI which S3 buckets are largest, then model those here.
When the bill moves and you don't know why, ask AI why your AWS bill increased and it will break the change down by service and usage type.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Amazon S3 cost per GB per month?
In US East (N. Virginia), S3 Standard costs $0.023 per GB-month for the first 50 TB, $0.022 for the next 450 TB and $0.021 above 500 TB. That makes 1 TB (1,024 GB) about $23.55 a month before requests and data transfer. Standard-IA is $0.0125, One Zone-IA $0.01 and Glacier Instant Retrieval $0.004 per GB-month, but those classes add retrieval fees and minimum storage durations. Some regions, such as Frankfurt and Mumbai, cost more.
Is data transfer in and out of S3 free?
Data transferred into S3 from the internet is free. Data transferred out to the internet is free for the first 100 GB each month, aggregated across all AWS services and regions, then $0.09 per GB for the next 10 TB from US East (N. Virginia), with lower rates at higher volumes. Transfer from S3 to CloudFront is free, though CloudFront bills its own delivery. The guide to estimating S3 data transfer out cost works through the tiers.
Is there still an Amazon S3 free tier?
Not in the old form for new accounts. Accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits that can be spent on S3, instead of a fixed S3 allowance. Accounts created before that date had the legacy 12-month offer: 5 GB of S3 Standard storage, 20,000 GET requests and 2,000 PUT, COPY, POST or LIST requests a month. Because it lasted 12 months from sign-up, that offer has now run out for those accounts too. The 100 GB of free internet data transfer each month still applies to every account. See what the S3 free tier covers and what you pay after.
When is S3 Intelligent-Tiering cheaper than S3 Standard?
Intelligent-Tiering stores new data at the same rate as S3 Standard, then moves objects that haven't been accessed for 30 days to an Infrequent Access tier ($0.0125 per GB-month in us-east-1) and after 90 days to an Archive Instant Access tier. It adds a monitoring fee of $0.0025 per 1,000 objects of 128 KB or larger each month. For an object that goes cold, the tier move saves more than the fee once the object is bigger than roughly 250 KB, so it pays off for larger objects with unpredictable access. The S3 Standard vs Intelligent-Tiering cost comparison has worked numbers.
What counts as a PUT request and a GET request in S3 pricing?
PUT, COPY, POST and LIST requests are billed at the higher rate: $0.005 per 1,000 for S3 Standard in us-east-1. GET, SELECT and all other requests, such as HEAD, cost $0.0004 per 1,000. DELETE and CANCEL requests are free. Each part of a multipart upload counts as a PUT. The guide to calculating S3 GET and PUT request costs shows how to count them from your metrics.
How accurate is this S3 pricing calculator?
It uses on-demand rates from the AWS price list as of September 2026 and applies the storage and data transfer tiers the way the price list defines them. It leaves out tax, S3 Select scan charges, replication, transfer between regions, lifecycle transition requests, early-deletion and small-object minimums, Storage Lens, KMS and other add-ons, and it prices Intelligent-Tiering as if all data were in the Frequent Access tier. Treat it as an estimate, check the official Amazon S3 pricing page, and use Cost Explorer or ask AI why your AWS bill went up to see what you are actually paying.