How am I billed for my Amazon EBS snapshots?

Resolution

Amazon EBS calculates charges for snapshots by the gigabyte-month (GB-month). You incur charges based on the size of your snapshot and the length of time that you keep the snapshot.

Pricing depends on the storage tier. For the Standard tier, you incur charges only for changed blocks that you store. For the Archive tier, you incur charges for all snapshot blocks that you store. You also incur charges to retrieve snapshots in the Archive tier.

See the following example scenarios for each storage tier:

• Standard tier: You have a volume that stores 100 GB of data. You incur charges for the full 100 GB of data for the first snapshot (snap A). At the time of the next snapshot (snap B), you have 105 GB of data. Amazon EBS then bills you for only the additional 5 GB of storage for incremental snap B.
• Archive tier: You archive snap B. The snapshot then moves to the Archive tier, and Amazon EBS bills you for the full 105 GB snapshot block. Archived snapshots are full snapshots.

For more information on pricing, see Amazon EBS pricing.

To view the charges for your EBS snapshots, complete the following steps:

1. Open the AWS Billing Console.
2. Choose Bills.
3. In the Charges by service section, choose Elastic Compute Cloud.

You can also use cost allocation tags to track and manage your snapshot costs.

Note: You don't incur charges for snapshots that another AWS account owns and shares with your account. You receive charges only when you copy the shared snapshot to your account. You also receive charges for EBS volumes that you create from the shared snapshot.

Related information

Why didn't my storage costs reduce after I deleted a snapshot of my EBS volume and then the volume itself?

Why am I charged for Amazon EBS when all my instances are stopped?