4.4 Additional Billing Concepts and Services
Key Takeaways
- AWS Pricing Calculator estimates costs for AWS architectures before you deploy — useful for budgeting and proposals.
- AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes resource utilization and recommends optimal EC2 instances, EBS volumes, and Lambda configurations.
- AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog of third-party and AWS software that can be purchased, deployed, and managed from one place.
- The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculation should include ALL on-premises costs: hardware, software, facilities, staff, and overprovisioning.
- AWS offers volume-based discounts — the more you use certain services (like S3), the less you pay per unit.
Additional Billing Concepts and Services
AWS Pricing Calculator
The AWS Pricing Calculator (calculator.aws) lets you create cost estimates for your AWS use cases before deploying resources.
Key features:
- Estimate monthly costs for individual services or complete architectures
- Compare pricing across Regions
- Model different scenarios (On-Demand vs. Reserved vs. Savings Plans)
- Generate shareable cost estimates for proposals and budgets
- Export estimates as CSV
On the Exam: Pricing Calculator = estimate costs BEFORE deployment. Cost Explorer = analyze costs AFTER deployment.
AWS Compute Optimizer
AWS Compute Optimizer uses machine learning to analyze resource utilization and recommend optimal AWS resources.
Resources it optimizes:
| Resource | Recommendations |
|---|---|
| EC2 instances | Right-size (up or down) based on CPU, memory, network |
| EC2 Auto Scaling groups | Optimal instance types and sizes |
| EBS volumes | Right-size volume type and size |
| Lambda functions | Optimal memory size |
| ECS on Fargate | Right-size CPU and memory |
AWS Marketplace
AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog where you can find, buy, and deploy software from thousands of independent software vendors.
What you can buy:
- AMIs — Pre-configured EC2 images with software installed
- SaaS subscriptions — Software as a Service products
- Data products — Data sets for analytics
- Professional services — Consulting and implementation
- Containers — Container images for ECS/EKS
Pricing models:
- Pay-as-you-go (hourly or per request)
- Annual subscriptions
- Free trials
- Bring your own license (BYOL)
Volume-Based Discounts
Many AWS services offer tiered pricing — the more you use, the less you pay per unit:
Example: S3 Storage Pricing (us-east-1)
| Tier | Per GB/Month |
|---|---|
| First 50 TB | Higher rate |
| Next 450 TB | Lower rate |
| Over 500 TB | Lowest rate |
This tiered model also applies to data transfer, EC2 usage, and other services. Combined with consolidated billing (AWS Organizations), usage across accounts is aggregated to reach higher tiers faster.
Service-Specific Pricing Notes
EC2 Pricing Reminders
- Per-second billing for Linux instances (minimum 60 seconds)
- Per-hour billing for Windows instances
- You are charged while an instance is running (not stopped)
- EBS volumes are charged even when the instance is stopped (persistent storage)
- Elastic IPs are free when associated with a running instance, but charged when idle
S3 Pricing Reminders
- Storage: Per GB per month
- Requests: Per 1,000 requests (PUT, GET, LIST, etc.)
- Data transfer out: Per GB
- Lifecycle transitions: Small cost to move between classes
- No charge for data transfer IN
Lambda Pricing
- Request charges: Per 1 million requests
- Duration charges: Per GB-second of compute time
- Free tier: 1M requests + 400,000 GB-seconds per month (always free)
RDS Pricing
- Instance hours (per hour based on instance size)
- Database storage (per GB/month)
- Backup storage (above the provisioned database size)
- Data transfer (same rules as general AWS)
Cost Optimization Best Practices
- Right-size resources — Use Compute Optimizer recommendations
- Use Savings Plans / Reserved Instances — For predictable workloads
- Use Spot Instances — For fault-tolerant workloads
- Delete unused resources — Unattached EBS volumes, idle EIPs, old snapshots
- Use S3 lifecycle policies — Automatically move data to cheaper storage classes
- Use auto-scaling — Scale down during off-peak hours
- Monitor with Cost Explorer — Identify unexpected spending early
- Set Budgets and alerts — Catch overruns before they grow
- Use consolidated billing — Aggregate usage for volume discounts
- Tag everything — Identify which projects and teams drive costs
Which tool should a company use to estimate the cost of an AWS architecture BEFORE deploying it?
Which statement about Amazon EC2 billing is correct?
How does AWS Marketplace benefit customers?
A company wants to identify if their EC2 instances are over-provisioned and recommend the optimal instance type. Which service should they use?
A company wants to stop paying for unused Elastic IPs and unattached EBS volumes. Which AWS service can identify these wasted resources?
Which of the following is a benefit of consolidated billing in AWS Organizations?
A team member accidentally launches a very expensive EC2 instance type. What tool could have prevented the surprise cost?
Which statement about the AWS Free Tier is correct?