CloudWatch Pricing Explained: What Each Meter Costs
Prices checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Amazon CloudWatch is built into AWS, so most teams start paying for it without ever choosing it. There is no up-front commitment and no minimum fee, according to the pricing page. You pay for what you use, and the bill arrives at the end of the month.
The catch is that CloudWatch has many separate meters. Logs, metrics, alarms, dashboards, traces, and synthetic checks each have their own unit. This guide covers the ones most teams hit first, with exact list prices and a worked month.
The Short Version
- Every price here is for US East (N. Virginia). AWS says pricing varies by Region.
- Custom log ingestion is $0.50 per GB in the Standard class and $0.25 per GB in Infrequent Access.
- Logs Insights queries cost $0.005 per GB scanned.
- Metrics start at $0.30 per metric per month, and each dashboard beyond the free three is $3.00 per month.
- There are no commitment tiers, so a spike in volume shows up directly in that month's bill.
Pick A Region First
The CloudWatch pricing page has a Region selector on each tab, and the tables stay empty until you choose one. We chose US East (N. Virginia) and read the tables on November 8, 2026. When we selected US East (Ohio), one row (Parquet conversion for vended logs) showed a different price than in N. Virginia, so do not assume two Regions match.
How CloudWatch Charges For Logs
Logs have separate meters for collecting, storing, and querying.
AWS documentation says the Standard and Essentials classes differ in ingestion price only. Storage and query charges are the same in both. Essentials is the new name for Infrequent Access.
The cheaper class gives up features. Per the log classes page, Essentials has no Live Tail, no metric filters, no subscription filters, no anomaly detection, and no GetLogEvents or FilterLogEvents calls. You also cannot change a log group's class after you create it, so pick before you route traffic.
Vended Logs
Logs that AWS services deliver for you are priced in volume tiers that reset each month. For delivery to CloudWatch Logs Standard, the first 10 TB is $0.50 per GB, the next 20 TB is $0.25, the next 20 TB is $0.10, and anything over 50 TB is $0.05. The Infrequent Access column is $0.25, $0.15, $0.075, and $0.05 for the same tiers.
Metrics, Dashboards, And Alarms
Application Meters
The application tab adds more units. Trace data ingested for Application Signals and transaction search is $0.35 per GB for the first 10 TB. Spans indexed as X-Ray trace summaries are $0.75 per million after the first 1% is free. Synthetics canary runs are $0.0012 each, and RUM web events are $1.00 per 100,000.
A Worked Month
Assumptions: 500 GB of logs ingested into the Standard class, 200 custom metrics, 40 alarm metrics, and 5 dashboards. Logs compress to 25% of their size (our assumption), data is kept about 30 days, and queries scan 40% of ingested volume. We ignore the free tier.
Logs are about 76% of that total. Moving the same logs to the Infrequent Access class would cut ingestion to $125.00, if you can live without the features above.
Controls That Hold Costs Down
CloudWatch has no commitment to exceed, so the controls are about choosing cheaper paths:
- Use the Infrequent Access (Essentials) class for logs you only query after the fact.
- Choose the Region deliberately, since rates differ.
- Tag log groups so the cost allocation report breaks spend out by team or application.
- Keep dashboards under the free three where you can.
Line Items Teams Forget
- Live Tail at $0.01 per minute after 1,800 free minutes. A 20,000-minute month costs $182 in AWS's own example.
- Contributor Insights rules at $0.50 per rule per month, plus $0.02 per million matched log events.
- Cross-Region log copies at $0.05 per GB beyond the first.
- API requests for GetDashboard and related calls at $0.01 per 1,000.
Seeing Where The Money Goes
AWS documents Cost Explorer for this. Filter by service CloudWatch and group by Usage Type to see which feature drives spend. You can also group by API Operation or Region. Usage type strings include a Region prefix, such as the EU prefix for Europe (Ireland).
Where Sazabi Compares
Sazabi is AI-native observability and security. This comparison covers logs only, and we are a party to it.
CloudWatch stores and queries logs, and you build metric filters and alarms for the failures you expect. Sazabi starts from the logs themselves. It detects issues without hand-built monitors, groups repeats of the same problem into one issue, investigates root cause, and hands the findings to your coding agent through MCP, CLI, or API. Our AWS integration connects to log groups with subscription filters, so the groups you forward still incur CloudWatch charges.
Sazabi's Startup plan is $200 per 30-day cycle with 200 GB ingested and 50 GB scanned included, then $0.10 per GB for each. Retention is 30 days.
Assumptions: the compression, 30-day retention, and 40% scan rate above, applied to both sides. Sazabi figures leave out issues beyond the included 20 and AI credits beyond 500. At 100 GB, CloudWatch is clearly cheaper. At 1,000 GB, only the Infrequent Access class beats Sazabi. Because that class lacks subscription filters, groups you forward to Sazabi this way would sit in Standard.
See Sazabi pricing for the full plan table, or the Sazabi vs CloudWatch comparison for scope.
When CloudWatch Is Worth The Price
If your workloads live on AWS and you want metrics, alarms, and logs with no extra vendor, CloudWatch is hard to beat on convenience. Pay-as-you-go billing suits small or uneven volume, and the free tier covers a real starting point. Many AWS services publish to it by default. If you are moving away, the CloudWatch alternatives page lists other options.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does CloudWatch Logs cost per GB?
In US East (N. Virginia), AWS lists $0.50 per GB ingested for the Standard log class and $0.25 per GB for Infrequent Access, now called Essentials. Storage is $0.03 per GB compressed and Logs Insights queries are $0.005 per GB scanned.
Does CloudWatch have a free tier?
Yes. The page lists 5 GB of log data (ingestion, archive storage and Logs Insights scans), 1,800 minutes of Live Tail, 10 custom metrics, 3 dashboards and 10 alarm metrics per month.
Is CloudWatch pricing the same in every AWS region?
No. AWS states that pricing varies by Region and shows a Region selector. Every figure on this page is for US East (N. Virginia), so check your own Region before you budget.
Can Sazabi read logs that already sit in CloudWatch?
Yes. Sazabi can install a subscription filter on each CloudWatch log group you select, or you can run an OpenTelemetry Collector against your log groups. You still pay CloudWatch for the groups you keep.
Sources
- List prices for logs, vended logs, metrics, dashboards, alarms and application meters in US East (N. Virginia); free tier; no commitment or minimum fee (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Standard and Essentials (formerly Infrequent Access) log classes, which features each supports, and that the class cannot be changed after creation (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Analyzing CloudWatch costs in Cost Explorer by usage type, API operation and Region (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Tagging log groups so the cost allocation report aggregates usage and costs by tag (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included allowances, per-GB overage rates and retention (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- How Sazabi connects to CloudWatch log groups with subscription filters (accessed Nov 8, 2026)