Flat-Rate Pricing Plans

Overview

Instead of paying with pay-as-you-go pricing where you’re vulnerable to unexpected traffic spikes or EDoS attacks that can spike your bill, flat-rate plans offer one consolidated monthly price with no overage charges.¹

Pros: Cost predictability, protection from unexpected traffic costs

Cons: If you exceed your tier’s usage allowance, AWS may throttle performance or in some cases require a tier upgrade.²

Use Cases

Good fit:

• Personal projects, blogs, learning environments
• Non-critical applications where downtime is acceptable
• Workloads where budget predictability outweighs elasticity concerns
• Protection against unexpected billing from DDoS attacks or viral traffic

May not fit:

• Mission-critical systems requiring consistent availability
• Workloads with unpredictable traffic that need elastic scaling
• Applications requiring Lambda@Edge, real-time logs, or other unsupported features

Unsupported Features

Not supported in flat-rate plans:

CloudFront:

• Lambda@Edge (use CloudFront Functions)
• Real-time access logs (use standard logs)
• Multi-tenant distributions, continuous deployment
• Dedicated IP SSL, field-level encryption

WAF:

• CAPTCHA (use Challenge)
• Targeted bots (only common bots supported)
• Partner Managed Rules
• Account fraud/takeover protection

Legacy:

• ForwardedValues (use origin request policies)
• Origin Access Identity (use Origin Access Control)
• IAM certificates (use AWS Certificate Manager)

Other Constraints:

• Cannot share CloudFront Functions or WAF rules across distributions (consider the extra work of duplicating and maintaining this configuration separately)
• AWS Free Tier accounts not eligible
• Incompatible with Shield Advanced

See full limitations below for details.

Can I change plans at any moment?

You can select a plan for a new or existing distribution at any time. The plan’s cost will apply to the current billing cycle immediately.

Upgrades or downgrades to your plan will take effect starting with the next billing cycle.

Similarly, if you cancel a plan, the cancellation will be effective at the start of the next billing cycle, at which point the distribution will revert to standard pay-as-you-go pricing.

Is this compatible with AWS Amplify?

Currently, no. AWS Amplify operates under a separate pricing model and does not support CloudFront flat-rate pricing.

Pricing Tiers

What’s Included

Core Services:

• CloudFront CDN
• AWS WAF with DDoS protection
• Route 53 DNS hosting
• CloudWatch Logs ingestion (access + WAF logs)
• TLS/SSL certificates
• CloudFront Functions
• S3 storage credits

Migration Checklist

Before Migrating:

1. Review Configuration – Check for unsupported features (Lambda@Edge, real-time logs) and legacy configs
2. Analyze Costs – Review 3-6 months of bills; calculate average spend across CloudFront, WAF, Route 53
3. Check Usage Allowances – Ensure typical usage fits chosen tier
4. If necessary, plan replacements – Lambda@Edge → CloudFront Functions; Origin Access Identity → Origin Access Control; ForwardedValues → cache policies

Monitoring and Optimization

Monitor Usage:

• Proactive Notifications – AWS alerts as you approach limits
• CloudFront Console – Real-time usage vs. allowances

Resources

• CloudFront Flat-Rate Pricing Plans Documentation
• Announcing Flat-Rate Pricing Plans (AWS Blog)
• AWS WAF Pricing
• Migrating from Origin Access Identity to Origin Access Control