Aurora Cost Calculator
Compare Aurora Standard against Aurora I/O-Optimized on instance, storage and I/O charges, and find the break-even I/O volume.
About Aurora Cost Calculator
An Aurora Standard bill has a variable third component: every 8 KB page the storage layer reads or writes is a billable I/O request, so an I/O-heavy workload can spend more on I/O than on compute. I/O-Optimized trades that variability for a flat surcharge on instance and storage rates, and the break-even output is simply the extra fixed cost divided by the per-million I/O price. All rates are editable inputs with realistic us-east-1 defaults, so confirm current prices with AWS for your region. AWS suggests I/O-Optimized pays off once I/O is more than roughly 25% of the Aurora bill, and this is the arithmetic behind that rule of thumb for your own numbers.
Formula
Aurora Cost
Standard = instances × hourly × hours + GB × 0.10 + I/O millions × 0.20. I/O-Optimized = instances × hourly × hours × (1 + uplift) + GB × 0.225, with no I/O charge.
- instances
- Writer plus read replicas, each billed at the full instance rate
- I/O request
- One 8 KB page read from or write to the cluster volume
- uplift
- Percentage added to the instance rate on I/O-Optimized
- break-even
- Monthly I/O volume at which the two configurations cost the same
Worked example
With the default values below, Aurora Cost Calculator returns Estimated Monthly Cost of $725.10. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Instance priceminimum 0 $/hour
- 0.29 $/hour
- Read replicasaccepts 0–15 replicas
- 2 replicas
- Billed hours per monthaccepts 0–744 hours
- 730 hours
- Cluster volume in useaccepts 0–131,072 GB
- 400 GB
- Standard storage priceminimum 0 $/GB-month
- 0.1 $/GB-month
- I/O requests per monthaccepts 0–500,000 millions
- 250 millions
- I/O priceminimum 0 $/million
- 0.2 $/million
- Use Aurora I/O-Optimized
- No
- I/O-Optimized instance upliftaccepts 0–100 %
- 30 %
- I/O-Optimized storage priceminimum 0 $/GB-month
- 0.225 $/GB-month
Results
- Estimated Monthly Cost
- $725.10
- Instance Hours
- $635.10
- Cluster Storage
- $40.00
- I/O Requests
- $50.00
- I/O-Optimized Break-even Volume
- 1,202.7 million requests/month
- Cheaper Configuration
- Aurora Standard wins at this I/O volume
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Aurora Cost
- 3Estimated Monthly Cost= 725.10
- 4Instance Hours= 635.10
- 5Cluster Storage= 40.00
- 6I/O Requests= 50.00
- 7I/O-Optimized Break-even Volume= 1,202.7 million requests/month
- 8Cheaper Configuration= Aurora Standard wins at this I/O volume
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 10 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Aurora Cost calculated?
Standard = instances × hourly × hours + GB × 0.10 + I/O millions × 0.20. I/O-Optimized = instances × hourly × hours × (1 + uplift) + GB × 0.225, with no I/O charge. An Aurora Standard bill has a variable third component: every 8 KB page the storage layer reads or writes is a billable I/O request, so an I/O-heavy workload can spend more on I/O than on compute. I/O-Optimized trades that variability for a flat surcharge on instance and storage rates, and the break-even output is simply the extra fixed cost divided by the per-million I/O price. All rates are editable inputs with realistic us-east-1 defaults, so confirm current prices with AWS for your region.
Why does Aurora Cost matter?
AWS suggests I/O-Optimized pays off once I/O is more than roughly 25% of the Aurora bill, and this is the arithmetic behind that rule of thumb for your own numbers.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 10 inputs: Instance price, Read replicas, Billed hours per month, Cluster volume in use, Standard storage price, I/O requests per month, I/O price, Use Aurora I/O-Optimized, I/O-Optimized instance uplift, I/O-Optimized storage price. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
Do I pay for replicas at the same rate as the writer?
Yes — each Aurora Replica is billed as a full instance. Replicas share the cluster volume so they add no storage cost, but their queries do generate billable read I/O on Aurora Standard.
Are these prices current?
They are realistic us-east-1 defaults only. Aurora rates vary by region, engine and instance family, so confirm each figure against the AWS Aurora pricing page for your region before quoting a budget.