AWS Backup pricing and where it bills (2026)

AWS Backup pricing has a catch that the pricing page never states in one place: for most of what AWS Backup backs up, the storage is not billed by AWS Backup. An EBS volume, an EC2 instance or an RDS database protected by a backup plan bills its backup storage under its own service, at that service's snapshot rate. Filter Cost Explorer to the Backup service and that storage is simply not there.

How much does AWS Backup cost?

The AWS Backup pricing page lists the meters: "pay only for the backup storage you use, backup data transferred between AWS Regions, backup data you restore, and backup evaluations. There is no minimum fee and there are no setup charges." Restore testing, backup search and access points are priced separately further down the same page.

The rate tables on that page are rendered by script, so the figures below come from the AWS Backup price list file for US East (N. Virginia), published 11 September 2026, for resource types whose storage AWS Backup bills itself:

DynamoDB and Timestream restores cost 7.5 times what EFS restores do per GB. And there are no storage rates in it for EBS, EC2, RDS or Aurora, which is the subject of the next section.

Recompute AWS's examples before budgeting from them. Example 5, for backup search, prices 150 GB-month of EBS at $0.05 across 10 snapshots as $62, which is $75, and its total line shows a $0.15 restore as $0.015.

Why doesn't EBS and RDS backup storage show under AWS Backup in Cost Explorer?

Because billing follows a property called full AWS Backup management, and most of the popular resource types do not have it. The AWS Backup metering and billing page sets out both halves:

"When a resource type does not support full AWS Backup management, some of your AWS Backup activity such as storage costs for your backups, have billing reflected by the respective AWS service."

The feature availability by resource table shows which types are fully managed: Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, Aurora DSQL, Amazon Timestream, virtual machines, DynamoDB with advanced features, SAP HANA on EC2 and Amazon EKS. Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon RDS, Aurora, the four FSx file systems, DocumentDB, Neptune and Storage Gateway are not. The logically air-gapped vault page gives EBS as its worked example of a backup that shows under its own service, and states the rule: "Other resource type storage and data transfer charges will occur under their respective services."

The price list agrees. The US East (N. Virginia) file carries no standard-vault storage rate for EBS or for any RDS engine; the only EBS storage rate in it is the air-gapped vault one, even though the pricing page's Example 4 charges EBS in a standard backup vault at $0.05 per GB-month.

So the storage of an EBS backup taken by AWS Backup is billed as EBS storage. Not every EBS charge moves, though: the same price list bills item-level EBS restores at $0.03 per GB and EBS backup search under AWS Backup, and the pricing page's Example 3 counts EBS restore testing fees in the AWS Backup bill. AWS's Cloud Financial Management team places snapshots in the EC2-Other grouping, which "tracks costs associated with the Amazon EC2 instances, such as, Amazon EBS volumes and snapshots", so that is where to look, and what EC2 - Other contains breaks it down by usage type. The per-snapshot economics, including the archive tier, are in what EBS snapshots actually cost.

The exception is the logically air-gapped vault. There, "All billing charges from these vaults (storage or data transfer) occur under" AWS Backup, for every resource type, and at a different rate. The price list charges $0.0575 per GB-month for EBS in an air-gapped vault in US East (N. Virginia), 15% more than the $0.05 the pricing page charges for EBS in a standard vault there: $57.50 a month for 1,000 GB instead of $50.

What is AWS Backup cold storage, and which resources can use it?

A second storage tier a backup plan can move recovery points into after a set number of days. On the price list it is 80% cheaper than warm storage for EFS and VMware and 70% cheaper for DynamoDB and Timestream. The pricing page attaches the condition:

"Backups transitioned to cold storage must be retained for a minimum of 90 days. Backups deleted before 90 days incur a pro-rated charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days."

So 100 GB of EFS backups deleted 30 days after moving to cold still pays for the other 60 days: $1.00 of storage plus a $2.00 early deletion charge, exactly what 90 days of cold would have cost. The backup plan lifecycle documentation enforces the floor at configuration time: "Backups transitioned must be stored in cold storage for a minimum of 90 days, in addition to the time in warm storage." It also warns against moving too early: "If the full backup is transitioned to cold storage too soon (for example, a transition to cold storage after 1 day), AWS Backup will create another warm full backup."

Which resources qualify depends on which AWS page you read, and on 13 September 2026 three pages gave three answers:

The price list cannot settle it. It carries cold storage rates for Aurora DSQL, DynamoDB, EFS, SAP HANA, Timestream and VMware, but it only holds charges AWS Backup bills itself, and FSx for OpenZFS and CloudFormation are not fully managed, so any cold storage charge for them would bill under their own services. EBS shows the pattern: the pricing page says "Cold storage backup for EBS transitions backups to the EBS Snapshots Archive Tier", so it is billed as an archived EBS snapshot, covered in the EBS snapshot post linked above.

How is AWS Backup priced for RDS and Aurora snapshots?

At RDS and Aurora snapshot rates, under RDS, because neither is fully managed. The less obvious part is how AWS Backup snapshots interact with the backups RDS already takes. The AWS Backup RDS page says "AWS Backup periodic snapshots are classified as manual backups in Amazon RDS", and that "Amazon RDS provides a free backup storage allocation equal to your provisioned DB instance storage", covering automated and manual snapshots combined. An AWS Backup plan draws down the same allowance RDS automated backups use, so adding one can push an instance that was free into billed backup storage.

Aurora is described two ways. The metering page: "During the configured retention period for Aurora continuous backups (up to 35 days), snapshots do not incur a storage charge. Snapshots retained past this window are charged as full backups." The supported services page states the condition as a comparison: "AWS does not charge for Aurora snapshots stored inside a backup vault as long as Aurora has automated backups enabled and the retention period for Aurora automated backups is more than the retention period of Aurora snapshots." Read together, the 35-day ceiling is what matters. A compliance plan that keeps monthly Aurora snapshots for a year retains them far past any automated retention you can set, so those snapshots are billed as full backups. The same page adds that snapshots in the vault are charged once the source database is deleted, including during a blue/green deployment.

What do AWS Backup cross-Region and cross-account copies cost?

A per-GB transfer charge on the way out, plus storage in the destination. The pricing page splits resources into three transfer groups, and its Example 4 shows the spread: EBS copies at "3,200 GB x $0.02 per GB" and EFS at "2,000 GB x $0.04 per GB". Per GB, an EFS copy costs twice what an EBS copy does.

Who pays for the transfer is where the documentation contradicts itself. The pricing page: "The data transfer charges are billed to the AWS account transferring out the data. The backup storage charges are billed to the AWS account receiving the data." The metering page draws a distinction the pricing page does not: "For fully managed resources, the source account will see the data transfer charges, and for non fully managed resources, the destination account will see the data transfer charges." For EBS or RDS copies into a central backup account, the two pages name different payers. If you run chargeback per account, check the destination account's bill rather than trusting either page.

Two rules decide whether a copy is incremental or full, and a full copy bills every GB again. From the cross-Region backup page, EBS copies to a vault with a different KMS key are full, and "If you consistently copy to the same vault with the same encryption key, subsequent copies remain incremental." Key choices have cost consequences well beyond the KMS key charge itself. And from how incremental backups work, "Backups of resources which are fully managed by AWS Backup can only be incremental if the vault in which the backup is created also contains an earlier backup (incremental or full)". Pointing an EFS or S3 plan at a new vault starts a new full backup.

What do AWS Backup Audit Manager and restore testing cost?

Audit Manager has a price and a dependency. The price: "Backup evaluation charges are prorated per evaluation ($0.00125 per backup evaluation)", which is $1.25 per thousand. The dependency is AWS Config, which must be recording, and "Each time a backup evaluation is executed, one configuration item is recorded by AWS Config." Changes to plans and new recovery points record more. In Example 1, 3,000 evaluations cost $3.75 and the 2,000 configuration items behind them cost "2000 x $0.003 = $6.00", billed by AWS Config. That is 61.5% of the $9.75 Audit Manager total, and it will never appear under AWS Backup. How configuration item churn grows is in what AWS Config actually costs.

Restore testing is a fixed fee per recovery point plus the restore rate. "Restore testing evaluation charges are incurred for each backup or recovery point that you successfully orchestrate for restore through a restore testing plan", at $1.50 each in the price list. Example 3 tests 10 EBS snapshots and 15 EFS recovery points: $37.50 in fees and $15 of EFS restore, while the 640 GB of EBS restored costs nothing, "Charges for restored storage for EBS @$0.00 (as this is free) = $0.00". Fees are 71.4% of that $52.50. A plan testing one recovery point daily is $45 in evaluation fees in a 30-day month, plus the restore rate for the data restored, such as $0.02 per GB for EFS from warm storage. The restore testing guide warns that deleting the restored resources afterwards is not instantaneous, and the pricing page: "There can also be additional charges if the restored resource is retained for any amount of time after a restore is completed."

How do you reduce AWS Backup costs?

• Keep at least a week in warm storage. The metering page's example of a one-day retention ends with "you run the risk and expense of creating a full backup every day". The lifecycle page recommends at least 8 days before a cold transition.
• Only move to cold what you keep past warm plus 90 days. Below that, the early deletion charge makes cold cost the same as 90 days of cold, and for DynamoDB a restore from cold is $0.20 per GB against $0.15 from warm.
• Hold vaults and keys steady. A new vault restarts fully managed backups from a full copy, and a new KMS key does the same for EBS copies.
• Review RDS retention on both sides. AWS Backup snapshots and RDS automated backups count against one free allowance.
• Use tags on recovery points, then activate them. Per copying tags onto backups, resource tags and backup tags are copied to recovery points "up to a maximum of 50", and "DynamoDB does not support assigning tags to backups unless you first enable" advanced backup. The full management section lists Cost Explorer cost allocation tags as a benefit of full management specifically. A tag also reports nothing until it is activated, for reasons covered in why cost allocation tags come up empty.

To size AWS Backup honestly, add three lines to whatever Cost Explorer shows under Backup: EBS snapshot storage in EC2-Other, RDS and Aurora backup storage under RDS, and configuration items under AWS Config. The first is covered in the EBS snapshot and EC2 - Other posts linked above, the last in the AWS Config post.

Where the data being protected lives on a shared file system, the storage underneath the backup has a throughput meter of its own that the backup rate does not include: what Amazon EFS costs per GB-month.