About
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides durable, high-performance block storage for Amazon EC2 instances. It is designed for workloads that need persistent storage attached to compute, such as databases, mission-critical applications, and data-intensive systems.
EBS volumes can be created in a specific Availability Zone and attached to EC2 instances for use as file systems, database storage, or general block storage. The service includes multiple volume types to balance performance and cost, along with snapshot-based data protection and encryption capabilities.
- Persistent block storage for EC2 workloads
- Multiple volume types for different performance and cost needs
- Snapshot support for backup, recovery, and migration
- Encryption and access controls for data protection
- Designed for high availability and durable storage
Free Tier Value
The pricing page states Amazon EBS is usage-based: you pay for provisioned storage, with extra charges for IOPS/throughput on some volume types, plus separate snapshot and feature-specific charges. For the intro-tier free offer, the page explicitly includes 30 GB EBS storage, 2 million EBS I/O operations, and 1 GB snapshot storage; using the provided intro-tier rule, the conservative monthly value is $3 for the 30 GB storage component, with the I/O and snapshot allowances not converted into additional dollar value here because no concrete paid rate is needed for the requested single conservative number. The page also mentions up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, but per the rules free-credit value is credit/3 only when computing a credit-based tier; here the listing is intro_tier, so the recurring free-tier value remains $3.
What's included in the free tier
- 30 GB of EBS storage included.
- 2 million EBS I/O operations included.
- 1 GB of EBS snapshot storage included.
- Access to Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD volumes (gp3 and gp2).
- Access to Amazon EBS Throughput Optimized HDD volumes (st1).
- Access to Amazon EBS Cold HDD volumes (sc1).
- Up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for eligible AWS services, including Amazon EBS.
- Free plan available for 6 months after account creation.
- Free Tier credits must be used within 12 months of account creation.
See Amazon Elastic Block Store pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Paid plan
- storage
- No fixed quota; billed per GB provisioned
- iops
- No fixed quota; billed per provisioned IOPS for io1/io2 and gp3 extras
- throughput
- No fixed quota; billed per provisioned MB/s for gp3 extras
- snapshot storage
- No fixed quota; billed per GB stored
- FSR
- No fixed quota; billed per DSU-hour
- Pay only for what you provision
- EBS volume storage billed by GB provisioned per month
- Additional IOPS and throughput billed separately for supported volume types
- Snapshot storage billed separately
- Fast Snapshot Restore billed per DSU-hour
- EBS direct APIs and snapshot archive/time-based copy available
Pricing extracted from Amazon Elastic Block Store's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
