Amazon RDS for SQL Server Pricing

Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee. Estimate your monthly bill using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.

DB Instances (License Included)

Under the "License Included" service model, you do not need separately purchased Microsoft SQL Server licenses. "License Included" pricing is inclusive of software, underlying hardware resources, and Amazon RDS management capabilities.

Currently supported under this model: Express, Web and Standard Editions

On-Demand

On-Demand DB Instances for the License Included model let you pay for compute capacity by the hour your DB Instance runs with no long-term commitments. This frees you from the costs and complexities of planning, purchasing, and maintaining hardware and transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs. The pricing below applies to DB Instances deployed in a single Availability Zone (Single-AZ).

Note that pricing is per DB Instance-hour consumed, from the time a DB Instance is launched until it is terminated. Each partial DB Instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.

Reserved

As with On-Demand DB Instances under the "License Included" service model, you do not need separately purchased SQL Server licenses for Reserved Instances.

With Reserved Instances, you can make a low, one-time, up-front payment for each DB Instance you wish to reserve for a 1 or 3 year term. In return, you receive a significant discount off the ongoing hourly usage rate for the DB Instance(s) you reserve. Amazon RDS provides three RDS Reserved Instance types (Light, Medium, and Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances) that give you the flexibility to choose the right pricing option depending on your usage requirements. To learn more about Reserved DB Instances, please visit our Reserved Instances page. The pricing below applies to DB Instances deployed in a single Availability Zone (Single-AZ or Standard Deployment).

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Please note the one-time fee per DB Instance is non-refundable.

DB Instances (Bring Your Own License or BYOL)

Microsoft’s License Mobility program (referred to henceforth as Bring Your Own License or "BYOL") allows customers who already own SQL Server licenses to run SQL Server deployments on Amazon RDS. This benefit is available to Microsoft Volume Licensing (VL) customers with SQL Server licenses (currently including Standard and Enterprise Editions) covered by active Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) contracts. The Microsoft License Mobility program is suited for customers who prefer to use existing SQL Server licenses or purchase new licenses directly from Microsoft or any other reseller. To run a DB Instance under the BYOL model, you must meet the eligibility requirements and follow the Sign Up process laid out here. You must also have the appropriate SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance for the DB Instance class and SQL Server edition you wish to run, and must adhere to Microsoft’s licensing policies.

Supported under this model: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. AWS charges are the same for each edition supported under this model. The pricing below applies to a standard DB Instance deployed in a single Availability Zone.

On-Demand

On-Demand DB Instances for the BYOL model also let you pay for compute capacity by the hour your DB Instance runs with no long-term commitments.

Reserved

You can make a low, one-time, up-front payment for each DB Instance you wish to reserve for a 1 or 3 year term. In return, you receive a significant discount off the ongoing hourly usage rate for the DB Instance(s) you reserve.

Light Utilization Reserved Instances

Medium Utilization Reserved Instances

Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances

Please note the one-time fee per DB Instance is non-refundable.

Database Storage (License Included or BYOL)

For each DB Instance class, Amazon RDS provides you the ability to select up to 1 TB of associated storage capacity for your primary data set.

Your database storage charges will be the same whether you are running your Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB Instance under the License Included model or the BYOL model.

Provisioned IOPS Storage

For each DB Instance class, Amazon RDS provides you the ability to specify or provision the I/O capacity your database needs. You can provision from 1,000 IOPS with 100GB of storage to 10,000 IOPS with 1TB of storage with the SQL Server DB Engine. With Provisioned IOPS, you will be charged for the throughput and storage you provision. However, you will not be charged for the I/Os you consume.

Standard Deployment

Standard Storage

For each DB Instance class, Amazon RDS provides you the ability to select up to 1 TB of associated storage capacity for your primary data set.

Your provisioned database storage charges will be the same whether you are running your Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB Instance under the License Included model or the BYOL model.

Standard Deployment

Backup Storage (License Included or BYOL)

Backup storage is the storage associated with your automated database backups and any user-initiated DB Snapshots you have taken. Increasing your backup retention period or taking additional database snapshots increases the backup storage consumed by your database.

• There is no additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of your provisioned database storage for an active DB Instance.* After the DB Instance is terminated, backup storage is billed at $0.125 per GB-month.
• Additional backup storage: $0.125 per GB-month

* For example, if you have an active DB Instance with 10GB-month of provisioned database storage, we will provide up to 10GB-month of backup storage at no additional charge. Based upon our experience as database administrators, the vast majority of databases require less raw storage for a backup than for the primary data set, meaning that most customers will never pay for backup storage.

Data Transfer** (License Included or BYOL)

Internet Data Transfer

The pricing below is based on data transferred “in” and “out” of Amazon RDS.

** As part of AWS’s Free Usage Tier, new AWS customers will receive free 15 GB of data transfer out each month aggregated across all AWS services for one year.

*** Rate tiers take into account your aggregate Data Transfer Out usage across Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Amazon RDS, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, AWS Storage Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon VPC.

AWS GovCloud (US) Region

AWS GovCloud (US) is an AWS Region designed to allow US government agencies and customers to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. The AWS GovCloud (US) framework adheres to U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) requirements. Workloads that are appropriate for the AWS GovCloud (US) region include all categories of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), including ITAR, as well as Government oriented publically available data. For pricing information, please visit the AWS GovCloud (US) Pricing page.