With AWS AppSync, you pay only for what you use with no minimum fees or mandatory service usage. This provides you with transparency and a low price regardless of your workload type, because you only pay for the specific AppSync GraphQL and AppSync Events features you use.
Query and Data Modification Operations
AppSync GraphQL enables developers to query and modify data via API operations. You will be charged:
- $4.00 per million Query and Data Modification Operations
- Data transfer is charged at the EC2 data transfer rate
Real-time Updates
AppSync GraphQL also enables your app to receive Real-time Updates to the data that you want to keep in sync. Your app needs to remain connected to the AppSync GraphQL service to receive Real-time Updates.
- $2.00 per million Real-time Updates. All outbound messages broadcast, and WebSockets operations, like client connections, are considered Real-time Updates.
- $0.08 per million minutes of connection to the AWS AppSync GraphQL service
- Data transfer is charged at the EC2 data transfer rate
Caching
To further improve the speed of query and data modification operations, you can optionally provision a dedicated cache for your AppSync GraphQL APIs. After you select the instance type, you will be charged the following hourly rates, without any long-term commitments.
| Instance type | vCPU | Memory | Network Performance | Pricing |
| cache.small | 1 | 1.55 | Low to Moderate | $0.044 |
| cache.medium | 2 | 3.22 | Low to Moderate | $0.089 |
| cache.large | 2 | 12.3 | Up to 10 Gigabit | $0.298 |
| cache.xlarge | 4 | 25.05 | Up to 10 Gigabit | $0.595 |
| cache.2xlarge | 8 | 50.47 | Up to 10 Gigabit | $1.189 |
| cache.4xlarge | 16 | 101.38 | Up to 10 Gigabit | $2.379 |
| cache.8xlarge | 32 | 203.26 | 10 Gigabit | $4.758 |
| cache.12xlarge | 48 | 317.77 | 10 Gigabit | $6.775 |
AppSync GraphQL Merged APIs
With AppSync GraphQL you can combine multiple AppSync GraphQL source APIs into a single Merged API. When using a Merged API you are billed for query and data modification operations, and for performing real-time updates on your Merged API. There are no additional charges related to the source APIs used to create your Merged API.
AppSync GraphQL pricing example 1
A blog application has 50,000 monthly active users that each perform 100 searches. These searches generate 5,000,000 AppSync GraphQL query operations per month, with an average response size of 3 kilobytes (KB).
| Query operation charges | 5 million x $4.00 per million operations= $20.00 |
| Data transfer charges | 3 KB x 5 million = 15 million KB = 14.3 GB * $0.09 = $1.29 |
| Total AppSync GraphQL charges | $20.00 + $1.29 = $21.29 |
AppSync GraphQL pricing example 2
A chat application has 2,500 monthly active users. Each user has the app open for an average 1,500 minutes per month, posts 1,000 messages per month, and receives 1,000 messages per month from other users. This results in 2,500,000 data modification operations per month and 2,500,000 real-time updates per month.
| Data modification operation charges | 2,500 users x 1,000 sent messages x $4.00 per million operations = $10.00 |
| Data transfer charges | 1KB X 2.5 million – 2.5 million KB = 2.4GB X $0.09 = $0.21 |
| Real-time update charges | 2,500 users X 1,000 received messages X $2.00 per million updates = $5.00 |
| Connectivity charges | 2,500 clients x 1,500 minutes x $0.08 per million connection-minutes = $0.30 |
| Total AppSync GraphQL charges | $10.00 + $0.21 + $5.00 + $0.30 = $15.51 |
AppSync GraphQL Free Tier
The AppSync GraphQL Free Tier offers
- 250,000 query or data modification operations
- 250,000 real-time updates
- 600,000 connection-minutes
Use beyond these levels is billed at the published rates. The AWS AppSync Free Tier automatically expires after 12 months.
AppSync Events
AWS AppSync Event APIs enable you to publish and subscribe to real-time events. You will be charged as follows:
- $1.00 per million Event API operations. All inbound messages published, outbound messages broadcast, event handlers invoked, and WebSockets operations, like client connection, subscription requests, and ping requests, are considered operations
- $0.08 per million connection minutes.
- Data transfer is charged at the EC2 data transfer rate.
AppSync Events Pricing Example
A sports fan experience application publishes real-time scores and stats to its users during sporting events. The application publishes 10,000 messages on channel X and 100,000 messages on channel Y. An event handler is invoked on each published messages on channel Y only. 1,000,000 client connections are established on channel X and/or Y, each with an average duration of 10 minutes. Connected clients are sent a total of 10,000,000 outbound messages, with an average payload size of 1kb.
| Inbound messages published | 110,000 inbound messages x $1.00 per million operations = $0.11 |
| Event handler requests | 100,000 event handler requests x $1.00 per million operations = $0.10 |
| Outbound messages sent | 10,000,000 outbound messages x $1.00 per million operations = $10.00 |
| Client connection requests | 1,000,000 connection requests x $1.00 per million operations = $1.00 |
| Client subscription requests | 1,000,000 subscription request x $1.00 per million operations = $1.00 |
| Client connection minutes | 1,000,000 connections x 10 minutes x $0.08 per million minutes = $0.80 |
| Data transfer charges | 10,000,000 outbound messages x 1 KB = 0.01 (first 10 TB per month are free) |
| Total AppSync Event charges | $13.01 |
AppSync Events Free Tier
The AppSync Events Free Tier offers the following monthly usage levels at no charge for 12 months after you sign up for an AWS account.
- 250,000 real-time updates
- 600,000 connection-minutes
Use beyond these levels is billed at the published rates. The AWS AppSync Free Tier automatically expires after 12 months.
* Inbound and outbound real-time messages for both AppSync GraphQL and AppSync Events are charged per 5 KB payload of data delivered. For example, an 8 KB payload is metered as two operations.
Learn more about AWS AppSync Pricing