AWS Knowledge
Understanding Amazon SNS Pricing and Costs in 2025
Piyush Kalra
Jan 15, 2025
If you're on the hunt for a solid cloud-based messaging tool, Amazon Simple Notification Service is probably already on your radar. It’s known for being super scalable, reliable, and fitting seamlessly into the AWS ecosystem. It’s a top pick for developers and businesses wanting to set up messaging systems quickly and efficiently.
But, like any cloud service, managing costs is key—nobody wants to overspend. Thankfully, Amazon SNS can integrate with other AWS services like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to help you monitor and manage expenses effectively. To get the most out of Amazon SNS in 2025, you’ve gotta understand how the pricing works, where the costs come from, and how to optimize your usage. This guide has got you covered with everything you need to know.
What is Amazon SNS?
(Image Source: AWS SNS)
Amazon Simple Notification Service is a fully managed messaging service that allows application-to-application (A2A) and application-to-person (A2P) communication. The SNS provides a logical access point that enables publishers to send messages to topics, which then create endpoints for people subscribed to those topics, such as email addresses, mobile devices, or even HTTP endpoints.
Key Features
Message delivery: Send messages using multiple subscribers, such as email, SMS, mobile push notifications, or functions from AWS Lambda.
Standard vs. FIFO Topics: Standard topics will work best for large-volume workloads. FIFO (first-in-first-out) topics maintain message sequence and provide exactly-once processing.
Message filtering: Allows subscribers to restrict messages that are directed to them, hence receiving messages that are most pertinent to them.
Seamless scaling: Scales automatically to sufficient levels in response to demand without complex configuring.
Integration with other AWS services: Integrates with AWS Lambda, SQS, CloudWatch, etc. seamlessly.
Here's how it works:
Amazon SNS is a messaging service that sends messages between systems using a publish-topic-subscribe model:
Publishers are the defined systems or applications that transmit messages. They issue messages to an SNS topic which serves as a channel.
Topics are specific channels to which messages are sent. These topics control the message flow from the publishers to the subscribers.
Subscribers are the designated recipients of the issued messages. Their endpoints can include email addresses, phone numbers, listening, SMS, HTTP endpoints, or other services like Amazon SQS or AWS Lambda.
For example, a case where a company uses Amazon SNS to deploy push notifications on mobile applications invokes serverless functions like AWS Lambda for post-processing or sends alerts to various system modules. It is a handy tool for message dissemination and simple instruction transmission in complex systems.
Standard Topics vs. FIFO Topics
Standard Topics: Allows unlimited throughput and supports eventual message ordering (messages may arrive out of sequence).
FIFO Topics: Supports up to 300 messages per second and guarantees strict message ordering – perfect for scenarios where sequence and deduplication are critical.
Deep Dive into Amazon SNS Pricing Structure
Amazon SNS uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model. There are no upfront costs or long-term commitments; you only pay for what you use. understanding its pricing structure is essential.
Detailed Breakdown of Costs For US East (N. Virginia)
1. API Requests
Standard Topics: First 1 million requests are free, then $0.50 per 1 million requests.
FIFO Topics: First 1 million requests are free, then $0.60 per 1 million requests.
Note: API requests exceeding 64 KB are billed in chunks, meaning a 256KB payload would count as four requests.
2. Notification Deliveries
The cost of delivering messages varies based on the protocol used:
Mobile Push Notifications: Free for the first 1 million monthly messages; $0.50 per additional million.
Email Notifications: First 1,000 messages are free, then $2.00 per 100,000 messages delivered.
SMS (Text Messages): Costs depend on the recipient's region. For example, sending an SMS within the US costs $0.00645 per message.
HTTP/S Notifications: First 100,000 deliveries are free, then $0.60 per 1 million deliveries.
3. Data Transfer
Costs for data transferred out of Amazon SNS are as follows:
First 9.999 TB per month: $0.09 per GB
Next 40 TB per month: $0.085 per GB
Next 100 TB per month: $0.07 per GB
Greater than 150 TB per month: $0.05 per GB
Data transfer within AWS regions is often free.
4. Additional Features
Message Filtering: Attribute-based filtering is free, while payload-based filtering is billed at $0.09 per GB of scanned payload data in the US East (N. Virginia).
Message Archiving and Replay: Archiving data requires additional fees, with archive processing costing $0.10 per GB of stored payload data in US East (N. Virginia) and in-place storage billed at $0.023 per GB-month. Replay is billed at FIFO rates.
Message Protection: Scan and protect messages (block or de-identify): $0.08/GB. Audit reports: $0.20/GB.
S3 External Customer Library Integration: Using S3 for extended payloads incurs storage charges.
Potential Hidden Costs to Watch For
Large payloads can lead to significant charges, as messages over a certain size (e.g., 64 KB) are broken into multiple requests.
If using AWS Key Management Service for encryption, you’ll be billed for key usage.
Case Study: IIC Powers AI Predictions by Going Serverless on AWS
Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento aims to renew its coup EA3 in predicting renewable energy. IIC’s migration from on-premises systems to EDA significantly boosted scalability, which improved AI prediction by 30% and reduced monitoring efforts by almost 90%. This was made easier by utilizing AWS serverless technologies.
With systems on site, the IIC was unable to accommodate newly available data sources. New integration of AWS using SNS, SQS, Lambda, Glue, and S3 transformed the system to offer real-time workflows and flexible and efficient data processing, thus significantly boosting performance.
Results:
30% increase in AI prediction accuracy by integrating diverse data sources, including weather forecasts and plant variables.
90% reduction in monitoring and tracing efforts with AWS observability tools.
20 million predictions annually, with the ability to scale further as new customers join.
Tools and Tips for Cutting Amazon SNS Costs
Cutting down costs can be easy if you know what strategies to implement. The following is a list of approaches you can make use of:
Monitor and Analyze Usage: Use tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Trusted Advisor, learning expenditure patterns and saving becomes effortless through your spending habits.
Optimize Payloads: When dealing with API calls, expenses tend to increase with the size of messages sent. For Standard Payloads, messages can be kept at 64 Kilobytes whereas FIFO payloads have a maximum limit of 256 KB. Smaller payloads minimize the consumption of resources which greatly leads to reduced costs.
Leverage the AWS Free Tier: SNS has a free tier alongside mobile push notifications and 1 million API calls each month. Hence, it is advisable for SNS users to analyze their habits to ensure they are utilizing the benefits optimally while not exceeding the limits.
Use Message Filtering: Message filtering now allows subscribers to receive only the messages that are important to them. This saves costs by filtering the delivery of non-relevant messages and communications.
Plan for Growth with FIFO Topics: FIFO topics allow for the dissipation and removal of duplicate information while maintaining a particular order of the information. Being aware of the costs associated with FIFO topics is important to consider when planning to expand your application.
Conclusion
Understanding how to manage cloud costs is crucial to remaining competitive. The flexibility inherent to Amazon SNS’s pay-as-you-go model is without question. However, its pricing structure is nuanced, and therefore overspending is effortless. SNS users can avoid overspending by tracking usage, exercising the free tier, and optimising payload. Effective messaging systems can be constructed with precision without excessive expenditure.
Start saving today. Audit your current AWS SNS usage metrics and targets to uncover opportunities to enhance your messaging operations.
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