AWS AppSync Pricing Calculator

No. Query and data-modification operations use a per-operation meter, so a 2 KB response and a 200 KB response both count as one operation. Response size affects data transfer, which is excluded from this estimate.

Inbound and outbound real-time messages are metered in 5 KB increments per delivered message. A message up to 5 KB is one unit and an 8 KB message is two. The rounding happens per message, so a single average payload is an approximation when your message sizes vary widely.

GraphQL bills queries and mutations on an operation meter, subscription deliveries on a real-time update meter, and client connection time on a connection-minute meter. AppSync Events is a publish-and-subscribe API where published events, broadcast messages, event handler invocations, and WebSocket control operations all share one Event API operation meter, with its own separate connection-minute meter. Fill in both panels when one application uses both products.

Fan-out is usually what drives the bill. One published event delivered to 500 subscribers creates 500 outbound messages, and the 5 KB rounding applies to each one. Filter subscriptions and channels so broadcasts reach only the consumers that need each update, and keep payloads compact enough to stay under a 5 KB boundary.

Merged APIs use the same operation and real-time meters on the merged API, with no additional AppSync charge for the source APIs. Dedicated caches are billed per cache instance-hour regardless of hit rate, so enable one only when the reduced resolver work and latency justify the standing hourly charge.