Is DynamoDB serverless?

Yes. DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database. There are no servers to provision, patch, or scale: throughput scales automatically, you pay per request or provisioned capacity, and there are no maintenance windows or version upgrades. You interact with it purely through API calls, leaving all the infrastructure to AWS.

What "serverless" means here

DynamoDB offers zero infrastructure management, zero-downtime maintenance, instant scaling to demand, and pay-per-request billing. There are no cold starts, no version upgrades, and no maintenance windows — the classic serverless properties applied to a database.

How you pay

• On-demand capacity — pay per read and write request; DynamoDB scales throughput automatically to your traffic.
• Provisioned capacity — reserve read/write units (optionally auto-scaled) for steady, predictable load.

Storage is billed per GB-month regardless of mode.

What AWS handles for you

Backups, security patching, replication, hardware, monitoring, and scaling are all managed by AWS. You never size or run a cluster.

Go deeper

Compare the two billing modes in on-demand vs provisioned capacity, estimate cost with the pricing calculator, and download DynoTable to work with your tables.