AWS Secrets Manager Cost Calculator

Estimate Secrets Manager-style cost with a simple model: secret-month charges plus API request charges. Compare baseline vs peak usage with your pricing.

Inputs

Secrets (count)
Price ($ / secret-month)
Use your effective region pricing and secret type assumptions.
API calls (per month)
Avg 114.22 req/sec. GetSecretValue, PutSecretValue, DescribeSecret, List*, etc.
Price ($ / 10k API calls)
~$5.00 per 1M calls. Set to 0 for secret-only estimate.
Instances (avg)
Refresh interval (minutes)
Calls per refresh
Est 364,800 calls/month.
Scenario presets
Simplified estimate: secret-month charges + API request charges. Rotation workflows and downstream services may add costs.

Results

Estimated monthly total
$1,700.00
Secrets
$200.00
API calls
$1,500.00
API calls/month
300,000,000

How to get your inputs

  • Inputs: use billing exports, metrics, or logs to get real counts/GB where possible.
  • Units: convert throughput (Mbps) or rates (RPS) into monthly units when needed.
  • Scenarios: build a baseline and a high-usage scenario to avoid under-budgeting.

Result interpretation

  • Secret-month charges are steady; API calls usually drive spikes.
  • If API costs dominate, add caching and avoid per-request secret fetches.

Common mistakes

  • Using a single average and ignoring peak/incident scenarios.
  • Double-counting or missing adjacent line items (transfer, logs, retries).

Input checklist

  • Count secrets by environment and application.
  • Estimate API calls per app instance and startup frequency.
  • Identify retries or cache misses that inflate calls.

Scenario planning

Scenario Secrets API calls Drivers
Baseline Configured Expected Normal runtime
Peak Same Burst Deploy/incident

Validate after changes

  • Compare your estimate to the first real bill and adjust assumptions.
  • Track the primary driver metric (requests/GB/count) over time.

Next steps

Guides All calculators Guide: Secrets Manager pricing Guide: estimate API calls Guide: reduce costs Parameter Store cost calculator
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Example scenario

  • 500 secrets at $0.40/secret-month and 300M API calls/month at $0.05 per 10k calls.
  • Peak 240% scenario highlights deploy-driven request bursts.

Included

  • Secret-month baseline from secrets count and $ per secret-month.
  • API request charges from API calls/month and $ per 10k calls.
  • Baseline vs peak scenario table for API call spikes.

Not included

  • Rotation workflows and downstream service costs (Lambda, databases, etc.) unless modeled separately.
  • Fine-grained pricing nuances; use your effective blended rates.

How we calculate

  • Secret cost = secrets x $ per secret-month.
  • API cost = (API calls per month / 10,000) x $ per 10k calls.
  • Total = secret-months + API calls.

FAQ

Why do Secrets Manager costs spike?
Most spikes are request-driven: applications calling GetSecretValue frequently (per request), many pods/instances starting frequently, or retry loops causing repeated secret fetches.
What's the fastest lever to reduce cost?
Reduce API calls by caching secrets in memory with safe refresh, and avoid fetching secrets on every request.

Related tools

Guide: Secrets Manager pricing Guide: estimate API calls Guide: reduce costs Parameter Store cost calculator

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Disclaimer

Educational use only. Not legal, financial, or professional advice. Results are estimates based on the inputs and assumptions shown on this page. Verify pricing and limits with your providers and documentation.

Last updated: 2026-01-29