Level 0 · Orientation
How the bill is actually calculated
The most common first AWS bill shock is not compute. It is a NAT Gateway nobody remembers creating, charging by the hour and again by the gigabyte, in three Availability Zones.
Chapters
- How your monthly AWS bill is calculatedAWS charges for resources using four basic vectors — compute time, storage volume, request count, and data transfer — creating bills that accumulate even when servers are idle.
- Why moving data across AWS networks costs moneyAWS data transfer charges depend heavily on network direction, boundary crossing, and routing, making network topology a major driver of overall cost.