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.
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.