AWS Global Accelerator's data transfer pricing differs notably from other AWS services in structure and cost components.
AWS Global Accelerator Pricing Structure:
- It charges a fixed hourly fee of $0.025 per accelerator provisioned, regardless of usage or whether the accelerator is enabled or disabled. For example, running one accelerator continuously for a month (~720 hours) costs about $18 monthly[2][3][4].
- In addition to the fixed fee, there is a Data Transfer-Premium (DT-Premium) fee charged per gigabyte of data transferred through the accelerator over the AWS network. This fee depends on both the AWS Region serving the request (source) and the AWS edge location (destination). The DT-Premium fee applies only to the dominant direction of traffic (either inbound or outbound) during each hour, not the total data transferred[2][3][4].
- The DT-Premium rates vary by region pair, for example, $0.015/GB for North America to Europe and $0.035/GB for North America to Asia Pacific, which can lead to higher costs for global traffic[2][4].
- These DT-Premium fees are in addition to the standard EC2 Data Transfer Out fees charged for your application endpoints in AWS Regions[2].
Comparison with Other AWS Services:
- Most AWS services, such as EC2, S3, and Redshift, primarily charge data transfer fees based on standard data transfer rates without an additional fixed hourly fee. For example, EC2 data transfer out to the internet typically starts around $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB in the US East region, with tiered discounts for higher volumes. Transfers between AWS regions can range from $0.02 to $0.17 per GB depending on regions involved[6][9][10].
- Inbound data transfers to AWS services (e.g., EC2 instances) are generally free, whereas AWS Global Accelerator charges based on the dominant traffic direction, which can include inbound traffic if it is dominant[8].
- Data transfers within the same AWS region often cost $0.01 per GB for services like EC2, RDS, and Redshift, with some services like S3 offering free data transfer within the region[9][10].
- AWS CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN) service, charges data transfer fees to the internet that are generally lower than Global Acceleratorâs DT-Premium fees. CloudFront data transfer out to the internet is typically cheaper and does not have a fixed hourly fee[4][10].
Summary:
AWS Global Accelerator incurs a fixed hourly fee plus a premium data transfer charge based on region-to-edge location traffic, making it potentially more expensive than standard AWS data transfer pricing on services like EC2 or S3, especially for high-volume or global traffic. This premium reflects the value of its global traffic acceleration and static IP features. In contrast, other AWS services usually charge only data transfer fees without fixed fees, with pricing that varies by volume and region but generally has lower per-GB rates for data transfer out to the internet or between regions.
Therefore, AWS Global Acceleratorâs data transfer pricing is more complex and can be costlier compared to other AWS services, particularly for global applications with significant data movement across regions and edge locations[2][4][6][9][10].
Citations:
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/pricing/
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-pricing.html
[3] https://elasticscale.com/reduce-aws-global-accelerator-costs/
[4] https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/tip/Compare-AWS-Global-Accelerator-vs-Amazon-CloudFront
[5] https://www.nops.io/glossary/what-is-aws-global-accelerator/
[6] https://www.pump.co/blog/aws-data-transfer-pricing
[7] https://www.cloudforecast.io/guides/aws-data-transfer-cost/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/lnysm5/how_is_traffic_priced_if_it_originates_from_the/
[9] https://www.cloudoptimo.com/blog/understanding-aws-data-transfer-pricing/
[10] https://www.cloudbolt.io/guide-to-aws-cost-optimization/aws-data-transfer-pricing/
[11] https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/reduce-data-transfer-costs/