DynamoDB Pricing Concepts

Pay only for the resources you provision.

You do not allocate memory, CPU, and other system resources. Instead you specify the target utilization rate and minimum to maximum capacity that you want for your table.

DynamoDB handles the provisioning of resources to achieve your target utilization of read and write capacity, and also auto scales your capacity based on usage. 

Optionally, you can directly specify read and write capacity if you prefer to manually manage table throughput.

Pricing Concepts - Basics

You pay a flat, hourly rate based on the capacity you provision. DynamoDB charges you based on the provisioned Write Capacity Units (WCU) and Read Capacity Units (RCU), and also for the storage used. For details on WCU and RCU provisioning, click here. 

Data Storage   

• DynamoDB charges an hourly rate per GB of disk space that your table consumes            

• Price is  $0.25 per GB per month.

• The storage cost reflects the cost of storing multiple copies of each data item across multiple facilities within an AWS Region. 

Autoscaling

You specify the target utilization, minimum and maximum capacity limits for Auto Scaling,

DynamoDB Free Tier

1. 25 write capacity units and 25 read capacity units.

2. 25 GB of indexed data storage.

3. 2.5 million read requests per month from DynamoDB Streams.

4. Free tier does not expire at the end of your 12 month AWS Free Tier term.

Reserved Capacity

Reserved Capacity is a billing feature that allows you to obtain discounts on your provisioned throughput capacity in exchange for:

1. A one-time up-front payment

2. A commitment to a minimum monthly usage level for the duration of the term of the agreement.

Reserved Capacity applies within a single Region and can be purchased with 1-year or 3-year terms.

Cannot be moved from one Region to another.

Cannot cancel your Reserved Capacity and the one-time payment is not refundable.

The smallest Reserved Capacity offering is 100 capacity units (reads or writes).

When you purchase Reserved Capacity, you are agreeing to a minimum usage level and you pay a discounted rate for that usage level even if you have used less.

If you provision more capacity than that minimum level, you will be charged at standard rates only for the additional capacity.

Can buy reserved capacity from the DynamoDB console page. There are no APIs yet.

If you have multiple accounts linked with Consolidated Billing, Reserved Capacity units purchased are shared with all accounts connected to the Payer Account.

Reserved capacity will first be applied to the account which purchased it and then any unused capacity will be applied to other linked accounts.

Tagging

A tag is a label you assign to an AWS resource. Each tag consists of a key and a value.

AWS uses tags as a mechanism to organize your resource costs on your cost allocation report.

You can tag DynamoDB tables. LSI and GSI associated with the tagged tables are automatically tagged with the same tags.

Can use cost allocation tags to categorize and track your AWS costs.

You can see costs allocated to tagged resources through either Cost Explorer or cost allocation report.

Enables you to easily associate costs with technical or security dimensions, such as specific applications, environments, or compliance programs.

Cost Explorer is a free AWS tool that you can use to view your costs for up to the last 13 months, and forecast how much you are likely to spend for the next three months.

The cost allocation report includes all of your AWS costs for each billing period. The report includes both tagged and untagged resources.

DynamoDB Streams usage cannot be tagged at present.

DynamoDB Reserved Capacity charges per table will show up under relevant tags.

DynamoDB data usage charges are not tagged because they are billed at an account level and not at table level.

Tag keys and values are case sensitive.

Tag values can be null.

You can add up to 50 tags to a single DynamoDB table.

Tags with the prefix “aws:” cannot be manually created and do not count against your tags per resource limit.

Cannot track past usage before tag was created.

If you add a tag with the same key as an existing tag, the existing tag is updated with the new value.