Independently operated. Not affiliated with Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Labs, Dynatrace, Splunk, or Elastic. Pricing sourced from public pages and may not reflect current rates. Verify on each vendor's pricing page before purchasing.
MonitoringCost.comRun Calculator

Vendor

CloudWatch pricing 2026: every meter, decoded

Verified July 2026

Amazon CloudWatch has no plans and no platform fee. It bills a dozen separate meters, each usage-based with no economic floor. Here is what every meter costs, where the bill compounds, and what teams actually pay at three common scales.

TL;DR

Custom metrics: $0.30/metric/mo (first 10,000, tapering to $0.02 above 1M). Logs ingest: $0.50/GB Standard, $0.25/GB Infrequent Access, plus $0.03/GB/mo storage. Dashboards $3 each above 3 free; standard alarms $0.10 each. A 10-instance workload runs $50 to $150/mo; a 100-host workload with heavy logging $1,500 to $4,000/mo. There is no floor, so the bill tracks metric count and log volume directly.

Every meter

The CloudWatch pricing table

CloudWatch bills each capability on its own meter, all usage-based. US East (N. Virginia) list rates below; other regions carry a modest premium. Verify current rates on the AWS pricing page before you commit.
MeterList rateBilled on
Custom metrics (first 10,000)$0.30 / metric / moPutMetricData
Custom metrics (10,001 to 250,000)$0.10 / metric / monext tier
Custom metrics (250,001 to 1M)$0.05 / metric / monext tier
Custom metrics (above 1M)$0.02 / metric / motop tier
EC2 detailed monitoring~$2.10 / instance / mo7 metrics at first tier
Logs ingestion (Standard)$0.50 / GBingested
Logs ingestion (Infrequent Access)$0.25 / GBingested
Logs storage / archival$0.03 / GB / moafter ingestion
Logs Insights queries$0.005 / GBdata scanned
Live Tail$0.01 / minutestreamed
Dashboards$3 / dashboard / mo3 free
Standard alarm$0.10 / alarm / mo60-second
High-resolution alarm$0.30 / alarm / mo10 or 30-second
Composite alarm$0.50 / alarm / morule-based
Synthetics canaries$0.0012 / runper canary run
RUM (real-user monitoring)$1.00 / 100,000 eventscollected
API requests (GetMetricData)$0.01 / 1,000 metrics1M free/mo

Source: aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing, verified July 2026 (US East, N. Virginia).

Three scenarios

What teams actually pay

Concrete cost ranges for three common CloudWatch deployment shapes, with the line items that drive the total. Figures use the verified list rates above.

Small AWS workload, 10 EC2 instances

  • Detailed monitoring (10 x $2.10)$21
  • Custom metrics (~50 x $0.30)$15
  • Logs ingest (5 GB/day x 30 x $0.50)$75
  • Dashboards (2 above free)$6
  • Alarms (~20 x $0.10)$2

~$50 to $150/month

CloudWatch is cheapest at this scale. Third-party full observability would be 3 to 5x more.

Comprehensive, 100 hosts + logs + synthetics

  • Detailed monitoring + custom metrics$400 to $900
  • Logs ingest (50 GB/day x 30 x $0.50)$750
  • Logs storage + Insights queries$150+
  • Dashboards (30+ x $3)$90
  • Synthetics (20 canaries, 5-min cadence)$170+
  • Alarms + RUM$200+

~$1,500 to $4,000/month

Custom-metric explosion and log ingest dominate. The per-meter model has no economic floor.

Enterprise, heavy logging and metrics

  • Custom metrics (millions of series)$8,000+
  • Logs ingest (300 GB/day x 30 x $0.50)$4,500
  • Logs storage (multi-TB retained)$1,500+
  • Logs Insights (routine queries)$2,000+
  • Dashboards + alarms + Synthetics + RUM$3,000+

~$20,000 to $50,000+/month

At this scale, log filtering at source and metric-stream discipline are the primary levers.

Where the bill compounds

Six CloudWatch cost traps

CloudWatch has no surprise line items, but its usage-based meters accumulate in ways that are easy to miss until the invoice lands.
Custom metrics persist and bill indefinitely once published; deletion requires explicit action, and unused metrics quietly accrue.
High-cardinality dimensions (per-pod, per-request-id) multiply the custom-metric count into the tens of thousands fast.
Logs Insights bills $0.005 per GB scanned every time a query or scheduled dashboard runs, so a query on a 10 GB group every 5 minutes costs hundreds per month.
Detailed EC2 monitoring is opt-in per instance and easy to leave enabled on instances that no longer need 1-minute granularity.
Cross-region and cross-account observability adds data-transfer and API-request charges on top of the metric and log meters.
GetMetricData API calls from third-party dashboards (Grafana, custom tooling) bill $0.01 per 1,000 metrics requested beyond the 1M free tier.

Audit unused custom metrics

Drop metrics no dashboard or alarm queries. Recovers 30 to 60 percent of custom-metric cost on most workloads; metrics persist until explicitly stopped.

Filter logs at source

Use subscription filters or Lambda preprocessing to drop low-value events before ingestion. Recovers 50 to 80 percent of Logs cost on log-heavy workloads.

Use Infrequent Access logs

Route audit and compliance logs you rarely query to the Infrequent Access class at $0.25/GB, half the Standard ingest rate.

Verify before you commit

All rates on this page are AWS list pricing for US East (N. Virginia), verified against aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing in July 2026. Other regions carry a modest premium, and AWS adjusts rates periodically. Confirm the current figure for your region before budgeting.

Cross-references

Related pages

/aws-monitoring-cost

AWS monitoring cost: native vs third-party

/datadog-vs-cloudwatch

Datadog vs CloudWatch comparison

/datadog-pricing

Datadog pricing breakdown

/grafana-cloud-pricing

Grafana Cloud pricing breakdown

/azure-monitor-cost

Azure Monitor cost (Log Analytics)

/gcp-monitoring-cost

GCP monitoring cost (Cloud Operations)

/log-management-pricing

Log management pricing, normalised per GB

/free-monitoring-tools

Free cloud monitoring tools 2026

/calculator

Multi-vendor cost calculator

Frequently asked

How much does CloudWatch cost?
CloudWatch is usage-metered with no fixed platform fee. Custom metrics are $0.30 per metric per month for the first 10,000, then $0.10, $0.05, and $0.02 at higher volume tiers. Logs ingestion is $0.50 per GB (Standard) or $0.25 per GB (Infrequent Access), plus $0.03 per GB per month storage. Dashboards are $3 each above the 3 free. Standard alarms are $0.10 each per month. A small 10-instance workload typically runs $50 to $150 per month; a 100-host workload with comprehensive logging runs $1,500 to $4,000. Verify current rates on the CloudWatch pricing page.
How much do CloudWatch Logs cost?
CloudWatch Logs ingestion is $0.50 per GB on the Standard log class and $0.25 per GB on the Infrequent Access log class. Storage after ingestion is $0.03 per GB per month. Querying with Logs Insights costs $0.005 per GB of data scanned, and Live Tail is $0.01 per minute streamed. The ingestion charge is the dominant cost on log-heavy workloads; filtering low-value events at source before they reach CloudWatch is the main lever.
How much do CloudWatch custom metrics cost?
Custom metrics published via PutMetricData cost $0.30 per metric per month for the first 10,000 metrics, $0.10 per metric for the next tier up to 250,000, $0.05 per metric up to 1 million, and $0.02 per metric above 1 million. A metric is a unique combination of namespace, name, and dimension values, so high-cardinality dimensions multiply the count. The AWS Free Tier includes 10 custom metrics per month.
How much do CloudWatch alarms cost?
A standard-resolution alarm (evaluated every 60 seconds) costs $0.10 per alarm per month. A high-resolution alarm (evaluated every 10 or 30 seconds) costs $0.30 per alarm per month. A composite alarm, which combines multiple alarm states with a rule, costs $0.50 per alarm per month. The Free Tier includes 10 alarm metrics. Alarm cost is usually a small share of a CloudWatch bill relative to metrics and logs.
How much does CloudWatch EC2 detailed monitoring cost?
Detailed monitoring raises EC2 metric granularity from 5-minute to 1-minute intervals. It is billed through the custom-metrics meter: seven metrics per instance at the first-tier rate of $0.30 works out to roughly $2.10 per instance per month, dropping into lower per-metric tiers at high instance counts. Basic 5-minute monitoring is included at no charge, so detailed monitoring is only worth enabling where 1-minute resolution genuinely matters.
Is CloudWatch free?
CloudWatch has an Always Free tier that covers small workloads: 10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 1 million API requests, 5 GB of Logs ingestion, archival and analysis, 3 dashboards, and 100 Synthetics canary runs per month. Basic 5-minute EC2 metrics are also free. Beyond those allowances the per-meter rates apply, and there is no economic floor, so bills scale directly with metric count, log volume, and query activity.