AWS Backup Pricing: Full Breakdown + Cost Calculator

AWS Backup is the central data protection service for AWS environments, but its pricing looks deceptively simple on the surface: $0.05 per GB-month for warm storage. Between split billing, hidden API charges, cold storage minimums, and cross-region transfer costs, the actual bill can be significantly higher than expected.

The core issue is that AWS Backup has 7 separate billing dimensions, and most teams only account for one or two when estimating costs. Community forums are full of users reporting billing surprises, calling the pricing "complicated to figure out." That complexity is exactly what this guide addresses.

I'll break down every component of AWS Backup pricing with worked examples, highlight the gotchas that catch most users, and show you 10 strategies to reduce costs. If you want to jump straight to estimating your specific workload, use the AWS Backup Pricing Calculator that covers 14 resource types with real-time regional pricing.

What Does AWS Backup Cost?

AWS Backup uses a pay-as-you-go model with no minimum fees, no setup charges, and no upfront commitments. All pricing figures below are sourced from the official AWS Backup pricing page for US East (N. Virginia). You only pay for what you consume across seven billing dimensions. Here's the full picture of what can show up on your bill.

The 7 Billing Dimensions

Every AWS Backup charge falls into one of these categories:

1. Backup storage - the largest cost for most teams ($0.05/GB-month warm, $0.01/GB-month cold in US East N. Virginia)
2. Restores - charged per GB restored from a backup vault
3. Restore testing - per recovery point tested plus restored data charges
4. Cross-region data transfer - per GB transferred to another region
5. Backup search - per million items indexed, stored, and searched
6. Audit Manager - per evaluation for compliance monitoring
7. Malware protection - per GB scanned via Amazon GuardDuty

Most teams focus exclusively on storage costs and get surprised by the rest. Cross-region transfers and restore charges in particular can add 20-40% to what you expected.

Pricing also varies by region, typically 10-30% higher outside US East. I recommend using the AWS Backup Pricing Calculator with your target region selected to get exact numbers.

How AWS Backup Calculates Storage (GB-Month)

Storage is billed on a GB-Month basis, but the underlying calculation differs by service. For most services (EBS, RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, EC2), AWS tracks storage on a GB-hour basis and aggregates to GB-Month. For EFS, S3, VMware, SAP HANA, and Timestream, storage is billed on a GB-day basis, meaning you're charged for the entire day even if a backup exists for only part of it.

This distinction matters when you're doing precise cost calculations. A 100 GB EBS backup that exists for 12 hours costs half as much as one that exists for 24 hours. But a 100 GB EFS backup that exists for any portion of a day costs the same as if it existed the full day.

Now that you understand the billing dimensions, let's dive into the largest cost component: backup storage.

AWS Backup Storage Pricing Breakdown

Storage is where the bulk of your AWS Backup spending goes. Understanding the tier options and their constraints is critical to controlling costs. AWS offers warm storage for all services, cold storage for a subset, and a newer low-cost warm tier specifically for S3 backups.

Warm Storage Pricing by Service

Warm storage costs $0.05 per GB-Month in US East (N. Virginia) for all supported services. This is the default tier with immediate access to your backups for restores.

All prices above are for US East (N. Virginia). Use the calculator for your region.

Cold Storage Pricing (80% Savings)

Cold storage drops the per-GB cost to $0.01 per GB-Month, an 80% reduction compared to warm storage. But it's only available for a subset of services: EBS, EFS, DynamoDB (advanced features), Timestream, SAP HANA, VMware, CloudFormation, Aurora DSQL, and FSx for OpenZFS.

Before you rush to transition everything to cold, understand the constraints:

• 90-day minimum retention: Backups in cold storage must be kept for at least 90 days
• Early deletion penalties: Delete before 90 days and you pay pro-rated charges for the remaining days
• Irreversible transition: Once moved to cold storage, you cannot move a backup back to warm
• Higher restore costs: Restoring from cold storage costs more than from warm

Here's what the savings look like at different data volumes (monthly cost, US East):

The savings are substantial at scale. For a 100 TB compliance archive with multi-year retention, cold storage saves over $49,000 annually compared to warm.

S3 Low-Cost Warm Tier (New in 2025)

Launched in November 2025, the S3 low-cost warm storage tier offers up to 30% savings on S3 backup storage. Unlike cold storage, it maintains the same restore performance and features as standard warm storage.

Key details:

• Eligible after 60 days in the backup vault
• Same restore speed as standard warm tier (no restore penalty)
• One-time transition fee (nominal, not publicly listed)
• Configurable scope: apply to all S3 backups, specific vaults, or specific buckets
• AWS Backup evaluates eligibility once per day

A transparency note: AWS has not published the exact per-GB rate for this tier. They state "up to 30% savings" compared to $0.05/GB-month, which suggests approximately $0.035/GB-month. I'll update this guide when exact pricing is published.

Logically Air-Gapped Vault Pricing

Air-gapped vaults provide enhanced ransomware protection with isolated storage and multi-party approval for access. This isolation comes at a premium: approximately $0.0575 per GB-Month in EU West (Ireland), which is about 15% more than standard vault storage.

Important: the EBS, DocumentDB, and Neptune free tiers do not apply when storage is in a logically air-gapped vault.

While the base storage rate is the same across most services, each service has unique billing nuances that can significantly affect your total cost.

Per-Service Pricing: What Makes Each Service Different

AWS Backup pricing is not uniform across services. Each service has unique billing quirks, feature requirements, and hidden charges that affect your total cost. Here's what you need to know for the most commonly backed-up services.

EBS Backup Pricing

EBS is the most straightforward backup resource. Cold storage is supported (transitions to EBS Snapshots Archive Tier), and backups are incremental after the first full snapshot. Cross-region transfer is the cheapest at $0.02/GB (Group 3 rate).

EBS also has a service-specific free tier for snapshot storage. This applies to backups managed through AWS Backup, but not for backups stored in air-gapped vaults.

For underlying EBS costs, check the EBS Pricing Calculator.

EFS Backup Pricing

EFS backups use GB-day billing instead of GB-hour, which means you pay for a full day even if a backup runs for only a few hours. Cold storage is available, and EFS is a fully-managed resource, meaning all charges appear under "Backup" on your AWS bill.

Cross-region transfer is $0.04/GB (Group 1 rate), double the EBS rate. Factor this in if you're running cross-region DR for large EFS file systems.

See the EFS Pricing Calculator for base storage costs.

RDS and Aurora Backup Pricing

RDS and Aurora have distinct billing behaviors:

• RDS: No cold storage option. Backups priced at $0.05/GB-month for warm storage. Cross-region transfer at $0.02/GB (Group 3)
• Aurora: Snapshots during the configured retention period (up to 35 days) are free. Past that window, they're charged as full backups at $0.05/GB-month. This 35-day free period is a significant cost advantage if you structure your retention accordingly

Both support PITR (point-in-time recovery), which can be more cost-effective than frequent snapshot backups for operational recovery needs.

Explore the RDS Pricing Calculator and Aurora Pricing Calculator for base database costs.

DynamoDB Backup Pricing

DynamoDB has a major gotcha: basic and advanced feature tiers. With basic features, you get limited backup capabilities (no cross-region, no cold storage, no cost allocation tags). To unlock cold storage, cross-region copies, and tagging for cost tracking, you must opt into advanced features.

This opt-in is per-table and cannot be reverted. Make sure you need the advanced capabilities before enabling them.

S3 Backup Pricing (Hidden API Costs)

S3 backups carry hidden costs that catch nearly everyone. Beyond the $0.05/GB-month storage charge, you'll also pay:

• S3 GET and LIST API request charges billed by S3 (not by AWS Backup)
• EventBridge event charges for backup event processing
• 128 KB minimum object size for pricing (small objects cost disproportionately more)
• Versioning required on the source bucket

How significant are these hidden charges? AWS's own pricing example shows a 500 TB / 100 million object S3 backup incurring $341 in API and EventBridge costs on top of a $25,000 storage bill. That's a small percentage at scale, but for smaller buckets with millions of tiny objects, API costs can be a meaningful fraction of your total.

For base S3 costs, check the S3 Pricing Calculator.

Beyond storage, several additional cost components can add up, and most users don't discover them until they see their bill.

Additional Cost Components Most Users Miss

Storage gets all the attention, but AWS Backup pricing includes several additional charges that can meaningfully increase your total spend. This pattern appears across AWS services - CloudTrail has similar hidden costs in CloudWatch Logs ingestion, cross-region transfers, and KMS encryption overhead. Here's a breakdown of each, with the pricing details you need for accurate cost estimation.

Restore Pricing

Restoring data from AWS Backup is not free. Warm storage restores cost $0.02 per GB. Item-level restores (for EFS, S3, EBS, VMware, EKS, Redshift Serverless) add a $0.50 per request fee on top of the per-GB charge. EBS file-level restores from indexed snapshots cost $0.03 per GB.

Cold storage restores cost more than warm, though AWS doesn't publish exact cold restore rates for all services. Budget conservatively if you plan frequent restores from cold storage.

Cross-Region Data Transfer Costs

Cross-region copies incur transfer charges billed to the sending account, plus storage charges in the destination region billed to the receiving account. No charges apply for same-region operations. Rates depend on the resource group:

For a related network cost that often accompanies cross-region architectures, see the NAT Gateway pricing guide.

Restore Testing Pricing

Automated restore testing costs $1.50 per recovery point tested plus standard restore data charges. The one exception: EBS snapshot restore testing does not charge for the restored storage component, making it free beyond the $1.50 evaluation fee.

Backup Search and Indexing Pricing

If you enable backup indexing for item-level recovery:

• Index creation: $0.20 per million files/objects indexed
• Index storage: $0.02 per million items stored per month
• Search queries: $0.07 per million items searched

These are ongoing costs that accumulate over time. Only enable indexing for resources where you actually need file-level search and recovery.

Audit Manager Pricing

AWS Backup Audit Manager charges $1.25 per 1,000 evaluations ($0.00125 each). Each evaluation also generates AWS Config configuration items billed at $0.003 per item on a separate Config bill. Running daily evaluations across hundreds of resources can add up, so scope your audit controls carefully.

Malware Protection Pricing

Malware scanning is billed through Amazon GuardDuty based on total GB scanned per month. Incremental scanning is available to reduce costs by only scanning changed data. Check the GuardDuty pricing page for exact rates.

Understanding these cost components is essential, but there are also several pricing traps that catch even experienced AWS users off guard.

Common AWS Backup Pricing Gotchas

These are the billing surprises I see users report most often. Understanding them upfront can save you from an unexpectedly high bill.

The 1-Day Retention Trap

This is subtle but expensive. If you configure daily backups with only 1-day retention, and the backup job takes all day to complete, AWS Backup deletes the backup immediately upon completion. The next day, there's no existing warm backup to reference, so AWS Backup must create a full backup instead of an incremental one.

The fix: AWS recommends a minimum 1-week warm retention to ensure incremental backups work properly. The small additional storage cost of keeping a week of backups is far less than creating daily full backups.

Split Billing Confusion

Where AWS Backup charges appear on your bill depends on whether the resource uses "full AWS Backup management":

This split is why many teams struggle to get a complete picture of their backup costs in AWS Cost Explorer. You need to check both the "Backup" service and individual service line items to see the full spend.

S3 Hidden API Request Charges

As mentioned in the per-service section, S3 backups incur GET/LIST API charges and EventBridge event fees billed outside of AWS Backup. For a 500 TB backup with 100 million objects, AWS's own example shows $341 in additional charges: $320 in GET APIs, $1 in LIST APIs, and $20 in EventBridge events.

Cold Storage Early Deletion Penalties

Delete a backup from cold storage before the 90-day minimum, and you'll pay the remaining balance. If you transition a backup on day 1 and delete on day 30, you pay for all 90 days. The transition is irreversible, so plan retention periods carefully before enabling cold storage lifecycle rules.

Cross-Region Transfer "Tax"

Cross-region copies incur both transfer charges ($0.02-$0.04/GB) and storage charges in the destination region. For a 1 TB EFS backup copied cross-region, you'd pay $40 in transfer plus $50/month in destination storage. That effectively increases your per-GB costs by 40-80% compared to single-region backup.

If you're already using AWS Backup, you might wonder how it compares to managing native snapshots yourself.

AWS Backup vs Native Snapshots: Cost Comparison

A common question is whether AWS Backup adds a cost premium over managing native snapshots directly. The short answer: storage costs are identical, and AWS Backup adds operational value that often reduces overall spend.

For EBS, both native snapshots and AWS Backup backups cost $0.05/GB-month warm and $0.01/GB-month cold. AWS Backup doesn't charge a management fee on top of the per-GB storage rate.

What AWS Backup adds at no storage premium:

• Centralized management across all services from a single console
• Automated lifecycle policies that transition backups to cold storage and enforce retention
• Cross-account and cross-region automation for disaster recovery
• Policy-based backup with tag-based resource assignment
• Compliance reporting via Audit Manager

The real cost benefit of AWS Backup comes from automation. Without it, teams tend to over-retain backups (no automated deletion), miss cold storage transitions (leaving data in expensive warm storage), and lack visibility into which resources are actually backed up. These operational gaps cost more than any management premium ever would.

Whether you use AWS Backup or native snapshots, there are proven strategies to reduce your backup spend significantly.

How to Reduce AWS Backup Costs (10 Strategies)

These strategies can meaningfully reduce your AWS Backup bill. Service NSW achieved a 70% reduction in backup costs by implementing several of these approaches. You can also combine these backup-specific optimizations with broader AWS Savings Plans for additional compute savings. Here's how to apply them to your environment.

1. Implement a Tiered Backup Strategy

Instead of taking daily full-frequency backups with long retention, use a tiered approach:

• PITR (continuous backups) for recent data (supported for S3, RDS, Aurora, SAP HANA)
• Daily snapshots with 7-14 day retention for operational recovery
• Weekly/monthly snapshots with longer retention for compliance
• Yearly snapshots for regulatory long-term retention

This is exactly what Service NSW did to achieve their 70% cost reduction. They moved from daily snapshots with multi-year retention to a tiered strategy that matched backup frequency and retention to actual recovery requirements.

2. Transition to Cold Storage

For supported resources, transitioning to cold storage yields 80% storage savings. Use the decision flowchart above to determine eligibility. The key constraint is the 90-day minimum retention, so only use cold storage for backups you'll keep longer than 90 days.

3. Right-Size Retention Periods

Audit your backup plans and ask: do you actually need 365-day retention for dev environments? Shortening retention from 1 year to 90 days for non-production workloads immediately reduces storage costs by 75%.

And remember the 1-day retention trap: always maintain at least 1-week warm retention to keep incremental backups working.

4. Use S3 Backup Tiering

Enable the low-cost warm tier for S3 backups older than 60 days. Up to 30% savings with no restore performance penalty. This is a simple configuration change with immediate cost impact for anyone with significant S3 backup volumes.

5. Be Selective About What You Back Up

Use tag-based resource assignments to back up only essential resources. For S3 specifically, select individual buckets rather than backing up everything, and use S3 lifecycle rules to delete noncurrent versions and expired delete markers before backup runs.

6. Leverage Cost Allocation Tags

Tag your backup vaults and plans, then use AWS Cost Explorer to track backup costs by project, team, or environment. The same tagging strategy applies to other AWS services with complex pricing like CloudTrail Lake, where event data stores support cost allocation tags for tracking security and compliance costs. Set up AWS Budgets alerts for backup spending thresholds. You can't optimize what you can't measure. For a broader set of AWS cost estimation tools, check out our comparison guide.

7. Optimize Cross-Region Copies

Only enable cross-region copies for resources that actually require disaster recovery. Remember that EFS and DynamoDB transfers cost $0.04/GB (Group 1) while EBS and RDS cost $0.02/GB (Group 3). If you're running cross-region DR, understanding these rate differences helps you prioritize which resources truly need it.

8. Back Up Directly to Air-Gapped Vaults

For fully-managed resources (EFS, S3, DynamoDB advanced), back up directly to air-gapped vaults instead of maintaining copies in both standard and air-gapped vaults. This eliminates duplicate storage costs.

9. Leverage Incremental Backups

After the first full backup, AWS Backup stores only changed data for most services. This happens automatically, but understanding it helps with cost forecasting: your first backup is always the most expensive, and subsequent backups cost a fraction of that.

10. Optimize Backup Search Costs

Only enable backup indexing for resources where you need file-level search and item-level recovery. Index creation ($0.20/million files) and storage ($0.02/million items/month) are ongoing costs that add up across large environments.

To put these strategies into perspective, let's walk through real-world cost examples for different architecture sizes.

Real-World AWS Backup Cost Examples

Here are three scenarios showing what AWS Backup actually costs for different architecture sizes. All prices use US East (N. Virginia) rates.

Small Startup (EBS + RDS)

Setup: 5 EBS volumes (100 GB each = 500 GB total), 1 RDS instance (50 GB), daily backups with 30-day retention, single region.

With incremental backups, the actual storage consumed after the first backup cycle is typically 10-30% of the source data, so real costs are likely lower than this worst-case estimate.

Mid-Size Company (EBS + EFS + RDS + S3)

Setup: 500 GB EBS across 20 volumes, 2 TB EFS, 300 GB RDS across 3 instances, 500 GB S3, daily backups, 30-day warm + cold storage for EBS/EFS (90-day retention), cross-region DR for EBS and RDS.

The cold storage transition for EBS and EFS saves $96/month compared to keeping everything warm.

Enterprise DR (Multi-Region with Air-Gapped Vaults)

Setup: 10 TB EBS, 5 TB EFS, 2 TB RDS, multi-region with air-gapped vaults in EU West Ireland, 50 recovery points tested monthly, restore testing for EBS and EFS.

At this scale, cross-region transfers and air-gapped storage represent over 55% of the total bill. Optimizing cross-region copy frequency and using cold storage for long-retention backups would significantly reduce this.

For quick answers to common questions about AWS Backup pricing, see the FAQ below.

Key Takeaways

AWS Backup pricing is pay-as-you-go with 7 billing dimensions. Here's what to remember:

• Storage is the largest cost, but restores, cross-region transfers, and hidden API charges add up
• Cold storage saves 80% on storage costs but requires 90-day minimum retention
• Watch for the 5 common gotchas: 1-day retention trap, split billing confusion, S3 API charges, cold storage early deletion, and cross-region transfer tax
• Service NSW achieved 70% backup cost reduction using a tiered strategy. You can apply the same approach
• Each service has unique billing quirks: Aurora's 35-day free period, DynamoDB's advanced feature requirement, S3's hidden API costs, and EFS's GB-day billing

Use the AWS Backup Pricing Calculator to estimate costs for your specific workloads before configuring backup plans. It supports 14 resource types with real-time regional pricing.

For broader cost optimization strategies beyond backup, check out AWS cost optimization best practices and the cost optimization checklist. If you're deploying backup infrastructure with CDK or Terraform, follow AWS CDK best practices and learn how to estimate infrastructure costs before deploying. For organizations with multi-account setups, cross-account backup policies add another layer to optimize.

What's your biggest AWS Backup cost challenge? Have you run into any billing surprises not covered here? Share your experience in the comments below.

Frequently Asked Questions