AWS SNS Cost Calculator

Estimate SNS-style cost with a simple model: publish request charges + delivery request charges + optional payload transfer. Compare baseline vs peak traffic with your pricing.

Inputs

Publishes (per month)
Avg 76.15 publishes/sec.
Deliveries (per month)
Avg 304.58 deliveries/sec.
Fanout per publish
Approx subscribers per publish after filtering.
Est 800,000,000 deliveries/month.
Publish price ($ / 1M)
Delivery price ($ / 1M)
Use your effective price for your protocols.
Avg payload (KB)
~1,525.88 GB/month, 4.65 Mbps.
Egress price ($ / GB)
Set to 0 if you want request-only estimate.
Scenario presets
This is a simplified model (publishes + deliveries + optional transfer). Topic/subscription features and downstream services can add costs.

Results

Estimated monthly total
$717.33
Publish requests
$100.00
Delivery requests
$480.00
Transfer
$137.33
Estimated transfer (GB/month)
1,526

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

  • Deliveries usually dominate; fan-out multiplies request cost quickly.
  • Payload size only matters when transfer is billable; set $/GB to zero if not.

Common mistakes

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

Input checklist

  • Count subscriptions per topic to estimate deliveries per publish.
  • Separate protocol mix (SQS, HTTP, email) if pricing differs.
  • Estimate payload size for the largest topics.

Advanced inputs to capture

  • Publishes and deliveries are different; fan-out multiplies volume.
  • Protocol mix affects effective cost and retries.
  • Model incident windows where retries spike deliveries.
  • Estimate payload sizes if transfer charges apply.

Scenario planning

Scenario Publishes Deliveries Payload
Baseline Expected Expected Typical
Peak High Burst Same

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 SNS delivery estimator Guide: SNS pricing Guide: estimate SNS deliveries Guide: reduce SNS costs SQS cost calculator
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Example scenario

  • 200M publishes/month and 800M deliveries/month with small payloads and your effective $ per 1M pricing inputs.
  • Peak 250% scenario highlights incident-driven fan-out spikes.

Included

  • Publish cost from publishes/month and $ per 1M publishes.
  • Delivery cost from deliveries/month and $ per 1M deliveries (protocol mix).
  • Optional transfer estimate from deliveries x average payload size (KB) and $/GB.
  • Delivery volume estimator for fan-out and retry scenarios.
  • Baseline vs peak scenario table for delivery spikes.

Not included

  • Downstream costs (Lambda, SQS, HTTP endpoints, retries) unless modeled separately.
  • Per-protocol pricing nuances; use your effective blended rates.

How we calculate

  • Publish cost = (publishes per month / 1,000,000) x $ per 1M publishes.
  • Delivery cost = (deliveries per month / 1,000,000) x $ per 1M deliveries.
  • Transfer GB/month ~= deliveries per month x avg payload KB / 1024 / 1024.
  • Transfer cost = transfer GB/month x $ per GB.
  • Total = publish + delivery + transfer.

FAQ

What counts as a delivery?
A delivery is typically one message sent to one subscription endpoint. If a topic has N subscribers, one published message can create up to N deliveries (after filtering).
Why can SNS costs spike during incidents?
Incidents can increase publish volume (alerts) and delivery retries. High fan-out topics can multiply deliveries quickly.
Should I include payload transfer?
If you deliver to internet endpoints or across billable network paths, transfer can matter. If your traffic path has negligible transfer charges, set $/GB to 0 for a request-only estimate.

Related tools

Guide: SNS pricing Guide: estimate SNS deliveries Guide: reduce SNS costs SNS delivery volume estimator SQS 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: 2026-02-07