Overview
Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider by revenue, with approximately 31% market share as of 2025. AWS offers over 240 services spanning compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, networking, security, IoT, and developer tools. The platform serves customers from individual developers using the free tier to global enterprises running mission-critical workloads across multiple regions.
AWS pioneered most modern cloud service categories and retains the broadest service portfolio. Pricing is consumption-based with multiple commitment options (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Spot). Cost management is one of the largest practical challenges — runaway spend, idle resources, and unanticipated data transfer charges are common. Enterprises should invest in FinOps tooling and cloud governance from the start of any non-trivial AWS adoption.
Key Features
- EC2 compute with 700+ instance types across multiple architectures
- S3 object storage — the foundational cloud storage service
- RDS managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB)
- Aurora cloud-native relational database
- DynamoDB managed NoSQL with single-digit millisecond latency
- Lambda serverless compute with 200+ event sources
- EKS managed Kubernetes and ECS container orchestration
- VPC networking with Transit Gateway and Direct Connect
- IAM, Organisations, Control Tower for identity and governance
- Bedrock managed foundation models (Claude, Llama, Titan)
- SageMaker end-to-end machine learning platform
- 108 Availability Zones across 34 Regions globally (May 2026)
Pricing
| Edition | Model | Typical Cost |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 t3.medium (Linux, on-demand) | Per hour | ~$0.0416/hour |
| S3 Standard storage | Per GB/month | $0.023/GB/month (first 50TB) |
| Lambda invocations | Per million | $0.20 per million + duration |
| Outbound data transfer to internet | Per GB | $0.05–0.09/GB (first 10TB) |
| Savings Plans (1-year compute) | Discount range | Up to 66% vs on-demand |
Pricing verified May 2026 in us-east-1 region. AWS pricing varies by region and changes frequently. Reserved capacity and Savings Plans materially reduce on-demand cost for predictable workloads.
Strengths
- Broadest service portfolio in the industry — typically the first to launch new categories
- Largest customer ecosystem; deep partner network and skills availability
- Mature, proven scale and reliability across global regions
- Strongest managed database options (Aurora, DynamoDB)
- Comprehensive identity, governance, and security tooling (IAM, Org, Control Tower)
Limitations
- Cost management complexity — bills surprise even sophisticated buyers
- Egress data transfer charges create lock-in friction with other clouds
- Service sprawl makes architectural decisions difficult; documentation is uneven
- AWS Support tiers are expensive at the higher levels (Enterprise = $15K/month minimum)
- Console UX has accumulated complexity and inconsistency across service teams
Buyer Considerations
AWS spending discipline is a function of organisational maturity rather than tooling alone. The biggest cost lever is application architecture decisions — choosing serverless over right-sized EC2, multi-region patterns, data transfer minimisation, and storage class selection — made years before the spend shows up. Build cost awareness into engineering decision-making early; retrofitting cost controls onto established workloads delivers materially smaller savings than getting architecture right initially.