DynamoDB Pricing Calculator
Estimate your monthly DynamoDB cost across any AWS region. Compare On-Demand and Provisioned capacity instantly, with the free tier applied — then share the result with a link.
Prices: us-east-1. Estimate only — excludes backups & transfer.
How DynamoDB pricing works
DynamoDB has two capacity modes. On-Demand charges per request — a read request unit per 4 KB read, a write request unit per 1 KB written — and scales to zero, so you pay nothing when idle. It’s the simplest choice for new tables, spiky traffic, or workloads you can’t forecast.
Provisioned capacity reserves a fixed number of read and write capacity units per second, billed hourly. For steady, well-understood throughput it can cost substantially less than On-Demand, but you pay for the reserved capacity whether or not you use it. The crossover point depends on how full your provisioned capacity runs.
Storage is billed per GB-month and is identical in both modes. This calculator covers requests, provisioned capacity, and table storage — it deliberately excludes backups, DAX, Global Tables, Streams, and data transfer, which are priced separately.
The biggest cost lever is access pattern: Query vs Scan explains why a filtered Scan quietly inflates your bill.
DynamoDB pricing by AWS region
These are the current DynamoDB rates in every AWS region, synced from the AWS public pricing API. On-demand request costs are shown per million request units — the rate AWS publishes is per single unit, which is exact but hard to reason about.
The cheapest regions are us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2, at $0.25 per GB-month of storage, $0.00065 per WCU-hour and $0.00013 per RCU-hour.
Storage is the paid rate beyond the 25 GB perpetual free tier. Provisioned capacity bills hourly, so one capacity unit held for a full month costs its hourly rate multiplied by 730. These rates cover requests, provisioned capacity and table storage only — backups, DAX, Global Tables, Streams and data transfer are priced separately.
The math behind the estimate
Provisioned capacity is billed per unit-hour, so one capacity unit costs its hourly rate × 730 hours a month — and delivers up to 2,628,000 operations in that month if fully used. Dividing the two gives a per-request price you can compare directly against On-Demand’s: at current us-east-1 rates, fully-utilized Provisioned works out roughly 3.5× cheaper per request, and the break-even sits near 29% utilization. Below that, On-Demand wins.
Item size rounds up before any of that: reads bill in 4 KB steps and writes in 1 KB steps, so a 4.1 KB item costs two read units per strongly-consistent read and five write units per write. That rounding is why shaving an item below a boundary sometimes halves a bill. The item size calculator computes the exact units for a real item.
If the estimate points you at Provisioned, two guides carry on from here: On-Demand vs Provisioned covers the mode decision in depth, and the auto-scaling setup guide shows how to hold real utilization near the target that makes Provisioned worth it.
Frequently asked questions
Is DynamoDB On-Demand or Provisioned cheaper?
It depends on your traffic. On-Demand bills per request with no capacity planning, so it wins for spiky or low/unknown traffic. Provisioned is cheaper for steady, predictable throughput. This calculator shows both totals side by side for your exact workload.
Does the price include the AWS Free Tier?
When the toggle is on, the perpetual free tier — 25 GB of storage plus 25 provisioned read and write capacity units — is subtracted from the monthly cost. On-Demand requests have no perpetual free tier, so only storage and provisioned capacity are discounted.
How are read and write capacity units calculated?
A read capacity unit covers a strongly-consistent read of an item up to 4 KB (eventually-consistent reads cost half, transactional reads double). A write capacity unit covers a write up to 1 KB (transactional writes double). Item size rounds up to the next 4 KB / 1 KB boundary.
Are these the live AWS prices?
Prices are pulled from the AWS public pricing API and committed into the calculator, then refreshed periodically. They reflect the rate at the last sync, not a real-time quote — always confirm against the AWS pricing page before committing to a budget.
How is this different from the AWS Pricing Calculator?
AWS's own calculator covers every service with every knob. This is a DynamoDB-only cost calculator: it shows On-Demand and Provisioned side by side for the same workload, applies the free tier, and puts the result in a shareable URL — the comparison the mode decision actually needs.
How much does DynamoDB cost for a small app?
Often nothing. The perpetual free tier covers 25 GB of storage plus 25 provisioned read and write capacity units — enough for many small, steady workloads to run at $0. On On-Demand, a few million requests a month typically costs a handful of dollars; enter your numbers above to see it precisely.