Data Transfer Costs

Understand ECR data transfer charges and how to minimize costs when pulling images across regions and availability zones.

Why it matters

Data transfer can become a significant cost driver for container workloads, especially in multi-region deployments. Understanding when ECR charges for data transfer—and when it doesn’t—helps you design cost-efficient architectures and avoid unexpected charges.1

ECR Private Registry Data Transfer

No data transfer charges:

  • Data transfer IN – Always free to push images to ECR from anywhere
  • Same-region pulls – No data transfer charges when pulling images to EC2, ECS, EKS, or other AWS services in the same region

Note: While data transfer is free within the same region, you’ll still pay data processing charges for infrastructure: VPC endpoints charge $0.01/GB per AZ, and NAT Gateways charge $0.045/GB. Direct internet access (via Internet Gateway) has no processing fees but requires public subnets.

Charged data transfer scenarios:

  • Cross-region pulls – Charged at Internet Data Transfer rates on both sides of the transfer (source region OUT + destination region IN)
  • Internet downloads – Standard data transfer OUT charges apply when pulling images to non-AWS destinations
  • Cross-region replication – ECR’s built-in replication feature uses standard cross-region data transfer pricing

Example cost calculation:

Scenario: Pulling 100 GB of images from us-east-1 to eu-west-1

Data transfer OUT (us-east-1): 100 GB × $0.02/GB = $2.00
Data transfer IN (eu-west-1): 100 GB × $0.02/GB = $2.00
Total: $4.00

Note: Rates shown are illustrative. Actual cross-region transfer pricing varies by region pair and follows tiered pricing. Check the EC2 pricing page for current rates.

ECR Public Registry Data Transfer

Public registries have more generous free tiers designed to support open-source distribution:

Free data transfer:

  • Data transfer IN – Always free to push images
  • Authenticated pulls – Up to 5 TB/month free to non-AWS destinations when authenticated with an AWS account
  • Anonymous pulls – Up to 500 GB/month free for unauthenticated (anonymous) pulls

Charged data transfer:

  • Over 5 TB/month – Standard data transfer OUT charges apply for authenticated users exceeding the free tier
  • Anonymous limit reached – After 500 GB/month, anonymous pulls are blocked (not charged)

Cross-Region Replication

ECR’s built-in replication feature copies images between regions automatically, but data transfer charges apply:

  • Replication traffic is charged at standard cross-region data transfer rates
  • Replicated images incur storage costs in each destination region ($0.10/GB-month per region)
  • Replication is one-time per image layer – only changed layers are transferred

When replication saves money:

If you frequently pull the same images across regions, replication becomes cost-effective:

Without replication: 10 pulls/day × 5 GB × 30 days × $0.04 = $60/month
With replication: One-time $0.20 + (5 GB × $0.10 × 30 days) = $15.20/month

Replication pays for itself after just a few pulls of the same image.2

VPC Endpoints

VPC endpoints are cheaper for high-volume pulls – At $0.01/GB data processing vs NAT Gateway’s $0.045/GB, VPC endpoints might save money

Resources

Footnotes

  1. Understanding data transfer costs for AWS container services ↩

  2. Private image replication in Amazon ECR ↩