CloudWatch Log Cost Calculator
Split a CloudWatch Logs bill into ingestion, archived storage and Logs Insights data scanned, and compare log classes.
About CloudWatch Log Cost Calculator
CloudWatch Logs has three meters and ingestion almost always dominates, because it is priced roughly sixteen times higher per GB than a month of storage. Logs Insights bills on data scanned, so a broad query over a month of logs costs real money even when it returns three lines — narrowing the time range and the log group is the cheapest optimization available. Prices vary by region and by log class, so confirm the current figures before budgeting. Debug logging left on in production is one of the most common surprise line items in AWS: a chatty Lambda printing a full request payload can generate more CloudWatch cost than the compute it was logging about.
Formulas
CloudWatch Log Cost
cost = ingested GB × ingest price + (daily GB × retention days × compressed share) × storage price + queries × GB scanned × query price.
- ingested GB
- Raw bytes accepted by PutLogEvents, before compression
- compressed share
- How much smaller archived logs are than the raw stream
- GB scanned
- Bytes a Logs Insights query reads, not the bytes it returns
Retention footprint
steady-state stored GB = daily ingest × retention days × compressed share — dropping retention cuts this linearly.
Worked example
With the default values below, CloudWatch Log Cost Calculator returns Estimated Monthly Cost of $769.25. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Log data ingested per dayminimum 0 GB
- 50 GB
- Log classone of Standard — full features and Live Tail, Infrequent Access — cheaper ingest, reduced features
- Standard — full features and Live Tail
- Retention periodaccepts 1–3,653 days
- 30 days
- Archived size as a share of ingestedaccepts 1–100 %
- 15 %
- Logs Insights queries per monthminimum 0 queries
- 500 queries
- Data scanned per queryminimum 0 GB
- 5 GB
- Standard ingestion price per GBminimum 0 USD
- 0.5 USD
- Infrequent Access ingestion price per GBminimum 0 USD
- 0.25 USD
- Archived storage price per GB-monthminimum 0 USD
- 0.03 USD
- Logs Insights price per GB scannedminimum 0 USD
- 0.005 USD
Results
- Estimated Monthly Cost
- $769.25
- Ingestion Cost
- $750.00
- Archived Storage Cost
- $6.75
- Logs Insights Query Cost
- $12.50
- Data Held at Steady State
- 225.0 GB
- Share of Bill From Ingestion
- 97%
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2CloudWatch Log Cost
- 3Retention footprint
- 4Estimated Monthly Cost= 769.25
- 5Ingestion Cost= 750.00
- 6Archived Storage Cost= 6.75
- 7Logs Insights Query Cost= 12.50
- 8Data Held at Steady State= 225.0 GB
- 9Share of Bill From Ingestion= 97
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 fees or charges 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 CloudWatch Log Cost calculated?
cost = ingested GB × ingest price + (daily GB × retention days × compressed share) × storage price + queries × GB scanned × query price. CloudWatch Logs has three meters and ingestion almost always dominates, because it is priced roughly sixteen times higher per GB than a month of storage. Logs Insights bills on data scanned, so a broad query over a month of logs costs real money even when it returns three lines — narrowing the time range and the log group is the cheapest optimization available. Prices vary by region and by log class, so confirm the current figures before budgeting.
Why does CloudWatch Log Cost matter?
Debug logging left on in production is one of the most common surprise line items in AWS: a chatty Lambda printing a full request payload can generate more CloudWatch cost than the compute it was logging about.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 10 inputs: Log data ingested per day, Log class, Retention period, Archived size as a share of ingested, Logs Insights queries per month, Data scanned per query, Standard ingestion price per GB, Infrequent Access ingestion price per GB, Archived storage price per GB-month, Logs Insights price per GB scanned. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
Is Infrequent Access worth switching to?
It roughly halves ingestion price, which is the dominant meter, at the cost of Live Tail, metric filters, subscription filters and some Insights features. It fits high-volume logs you keep for audit or occasional debugging, not the logs your alarms are built on.
Does shortening retention reduce the bill much?
It only reduces the storage meter, which is usually a small slice. If ingestion is 95% of your bill, cutting retention from 90 to 30 days barely moves the total — reducing log volume or moving to Infrequent Access does.