AWS Data Transfer Cost Calculator (2026): Egress, Cross-AZ

AWS Data Transfer Pricing in 2026: The Direct Answer

AWS data transfer is the most commonly underestimated line on the bill. The headline rate is $0.09/GB for outbound internet traffic in us-east-1 (first 10 TB tier), but cross-AZ ($0.01/GB) and cross-region ($0.02/GB) traffic also add up, and most teams don't even know what their actual transfer volumes are.

The Four Data Transfer Categories

1. Internet egress — outbound to the public internet. Tiered pricing starting at $0.09/GB.
2. Cross-AZ within region — $0.01/GB each way. Service mesh sidecars are big culprits.
3. Cross-region — $0.02/GB and up. Replication, active-active multi-region, federation.
4. CloudFront → internet — $0.085/GB but origin → CloudFront is FREE. Net savings if traffic is high.

Reducing Egress Cost

• CloudFront for user-facing traffic — egress from origin to CloudFront is free; CloudFront-to-internet has tiered discounts.
• VPC Gateway Endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB — these are free and skip NAT Gateway data processing fees.
• Topology-aware routing — keep service-to-service traffic in the same AZ when possible.
• Compress and cache — gzip API responses, Brotli static assets, longer cache TTLs.
• AWS Direct Connect for predictable high-volume egress — negotiated rates 30-50% below standard.