Step Functions Cost Calculator
Compare Step Functions Standard state-transition pricing against Express request plus GB-second pricing for the same workflow.
About Step Functions Cost Calculator
The two workflow types have completely different meters. Standard charges for every state transition, so a chatty workflow with retries and a large Map state can cost more than the work it orchestrates. Express charges a small per-request fee plus a GB-second duration fee, which makes high-volume short workflows dramatically cheaper — at the price of at-most-five-minute runtimes, at-least-once semantics and execution history that lives in CloudWatch Logs instead of the console. Check the current transition and GB-second prices for your region. Standard-versus-Express is usually a one-to-two order of magnitude cost decision at high volume, and it is far cheaper to make deliberately at design time than to migrate a state machine after the bill arrives.
Formulas
Step Functions Cost
Standard cost = executions × transitions per execution ÷ 1000 × transition price. Express cost = executions ÷ 1,000,000 × request price + memory GB × duration seconds × executions × GB-second price.
- state transition
- Every step entry, retry, choice branch and map iteration in a Standard workflow
- GB-second
- Express duration meter, measured from a 64 MB baseline
- transitions
- The Standard meter — it grows with workflow complexity, not just volume
Transition count
transitions per month = executions × transitions per execution; retries and Map iterations each add a transition.
Worked example
With the default values below, Step Functions Cost Calculator returns Estimated Monthly Cost of $300.00. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Workflow type to priceone of Standard — billed per state transition, Express — billed per request plus GB-second
- Standard — billed per state transition
- Executions per monthminimum 0 executions
- 1,000,000 executions
- State transitions per executionaccepts 1–5,000 transitions
- 12 transitions
- Average execution durationaccepts 1–300,000 ms
- 1,500 ms
- Express memory tieraccepts 64–4,096 MB
- 64 MB
- Standard price per 1000 transitionsminimum 0 USD
- 0.025 USD
- Express price per million requestsminimum 0 USD
- 1 USD
- Express price per GB-secondminimum 0 USD
- 0.000017 USD
Results
- Estimated Monthly Cost
- $300.00
- Standard Workflow Cost
- $300.00
- Express Workflow Cost
- $2.56
- State Transitions per Month
- 12,000,000
- Difference Between the Two Models
- $297.44
- Cheaper Model
- Express is cheaper by 297.44 USD per month at this volume
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Step Functions Cost
- 3Transition count
- 4Estimated Monthly Cost= 300.00
- 5Standard Workflow Cost= 300.00
- 6Express Workflow Cost= 2.56
- 7State Transitions per Month= 12,000,000
- 8Difference Between the Two Models= 297.44
- 9Cheaper Model= Express is cheaper by 297.44 USD per month at this volume
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 8 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges 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 Step Functions Cost calculated?
Standard cost = executions × transitions per execution ÷ 1000 × transition price. Express cost = executions ÷ 1,000,000 × request price + memory GB × duration seconds × executions × GB-second price. The two workflow types have completely different meters. Standard charges for every state transition, so a chatty workflow with retries and a large Map state can cost more than the work it orchestrates. Express charges a small per-request fee plus a GB-second duration fee, which makes high-volume short workflows dramatically cheaper — at the price of at-most-five-minute runtimes, at-least-once semantics and execution history that lives in CloudWatch Logs instead of the console. Check the current transition and GB-second prices for your region.
Why does Step Functions Cost matter?
Standard-versus-Express is usually a one-to-two order of magnitude cost decision at high volume, and it is far cheaper to make deliberately at design time than to migrate a state machine after the bill arrives.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 8 inputs: Workflow type to price, Executions per month, State transitions per execution, Average execution duration, Express memory tier, Standard price per 1000 transitions, Express price per million requests, Express price per GB-second. 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 retries count as extra state transitions?
Yes. In a Standard workflow every retry attempt, every Catch fallback and every iteration of a Map or Parallel branch is a billed transition, so a workflow with aggressive retry policies can bill several times its nominal state count during an incident.
When must I stay on Standard?
When you need exactly-once execution semantics, runs longer than five minutes, a durable visual execution history, or the .sync integration pattern that waits on a long-running job. Express trades all of those away for price.