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
The pricing page states the Step Functions Free Tier includes 4,000 free state transitions per month for Standard Workflows and that it does not expire after 12 months, so this is a recurring free tier rather than a trial or credit. Using the page’s Standard Workflows price of $0.000025 per state transition, the conservative monthly free-tier value is 4,000 × $0.000025 = $0.10. Express Workflows are separately usage-based and do not appear to be covered by the free tier, so feature parity is limited to Standard Workflows free usage.
What's included in the free tier
- 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
- $0.000025 each above free tier
- free state transitions
- 4,000 per month
- State-machine workflow orchestration
- Charges based on state transitions
- Includes retries as additional billable transitions
- Metered daily and billed monthly
Express Workflows
- requests
- $1.00 per million
- duration
- $0.00001667 per GB-second
- billed memory
- 64 MB chunks
- Pay only for what you use
- Charged by requests and workflow duration
- Includes console tests in request count
- Memory billed in 64-MB chunks
Pricing extracted from AWS Step Functions's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.