Yes, AWS Step Functions has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans. The free plan includes 4,000 free state transitions per month for Standard Workflows and free tier does not automatically expire after 12 months; available indefinitely to new and existing AWS customers. FreeTier.co estimates the free tier at about <$1/mo.
About
AWS Step Functions is a serverless workflow orchestration service that helps teams build and coordinate distributed applications with visual workflows. It is designed to simplify complex business logic, automate service integrations, and improve reliability across modern application architectures.
The service supports both standard and express workflows, giving organizations flexibility for long-running orchestration as well as high-volume, short-duration execution patterns. It integrates with a broad range of AWS services and is commonly used for ETL pipelines, microservices orchestration, parallel data processing, and automated operational workflows.
- Visual workflow design for clear orchestration and easier troubleshooting
- Integration with 220+ AWS services
- Built-in error handling and state management for resilient execution
- Serverless scaling for workloads ranging from a few executions to millions
- Support for standard and express workflow models
Free Tier Value
This free tier is perpetual and does not expire after 12 months, but it is capped at 4,000 state transitions per month and a credit card is still required to create an AWS account. At the published Standard Workflows rate of $0.000025 per transition, that allowance is worth about $0.10/month, so the free tier is useful as a small ongoing starter allowance rather than a broad paid-plan substitute.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- 4,000 free state transitions per month for Standard Workflows.
- Free tier does not automatically expire after 12 months; available indefinitely to new and existing AWS customers.
- Applies only to Standard Workflows state transitions; charges begin above the free tier.
- Retry attempts in workflows count as additional state transitions and consume free tier usage.
See AWS Step Functions pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Standard Workflows
- state transitions
- 4,000 free per month
- Billed per state transition
- Retries count as additional transitions
- Metered daily and billed monthly
- Standard workflow pricing
Express Workflows
- requests
- 1M requests = $1.00
- duration
- $0.00001667 per GB-second
- Billed by requests and duration
- Includes console test executions
- Memory billed in 64-MB chunks
- Duration rounded up to nearest 100ms
Pricing extracted from AWS Step Functions's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is AWS Step Functions free forever?
Yes. AWS Step Functions has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
What is AWS Step Functions's free tier worth?
AWS Step Functions's free tier is worth about <$1 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 36/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
