AWS (Amazon Web Services)

The leading cloud computing platform

As of 30 August 2026, AWS (Amazon Web Services) is free to use. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform that offers over 200 fully featured services including compute, storage, networking, datab. Softwr lists it under Cloud. AWS (Amazon Web Services) is made by Amazon Inc, launched in 2006, available on Web, API, iOS, Android.

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Overview

What AWS (Amazon Web Services) does

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform that offers over 200 fully featured services including compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, deployment, management, developer tools, machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT).

What people use it for

Web hosting
Data storage
Machine learning
Big data analytics
Application development

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about AWS (Amazon Web Services).

Data transfer in is free and data transfer out is charged, which is the standard source of unexpected bills
Discounts require one or three year Savings Plan commitments rather than being automatic
Every service is priced separately, so a working architecture has no single published cost
The free tier is a promotional allowance rather than an ongoing free plan

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)vs
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean: The developer cloud
AWS (Amazon Web Services)vs
Grafana Cloud
Grafana Cloud: Composable observability platform
AWS (Amazon Web Services)vs
Neon
Neon: Serverless Postgres for modern developers
AWS (Amazon Web Services)vs
Lambda (AWS Serverless)
Lambda (AWS Serverless): Run code without thinking about servers

Pricing

What AWS (Amazon Web Services) costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

AWS Free Tier

Free

EC2 750 hours/month
5GB S3 storage
20GB data transfer
RDS 750 hours/month
Lambda 1M free requests

Pay-As-You-Go

Free

No upfront payment
No long-term commitments
Pay only for what you use
Flexible scaling
Global infrastructure

Capabilities

Features

EC2 - Virtual Servers
S3 - Object Storage
RDS - Managed Database
Lambda - Serverless Computing
CloudFront - CDN
VPC - Virtual Network
IAM - Access Management
CloudWatch - Monitoring
Terraform
Integration with Terraform
CloudFormation
Integration with CloudFormation
Kubernetes
Integration with Kubernetes
Docker
Integration with Docker

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

What are AWS's payment options and pricing models?

AWS offers four pricing approaches: pay-as-you-go (you pay only for what you use), flat-rate plans combining multiple services into one monthly price without overages, Savings Plans offering discounts on compute and machine learning with 1- or 3-year commitments, and volume-based tiered pricing where costs decrease as usage increases.

Source

Are there contracts, termination fees, or commitments required for AWS?

No long-term contracts are required for AWS services. No termination fees apply once you stop using the service. Savings Plans provide optional 1- or 3-year commitments with discounted hourly rates, but you can revert to pay-as-you-go pricing anytime.

Source

Does AWS offer a free tier?

AWS provides a free tier that offers hands-on experience with AWS products at no charge. The free tier allows new customers to try eligible services before committing to paid usage.

Source

How do I estimate my AWS costs?

AWS provides the AWS Pricing Calculator and Cost Explorer tool to estimate costs for single or multiple services. AWS also offers cost optimization recommendations, performance reporting, and budget alerts to help track and control spending.

Source

Behind it

Who makes AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Company: Amazon Inc
Based in: Seattle, WA

Keep looking

Where to go from AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Best Cloud software for

Compare AWS (Amazon Web Services) with

Other Cloud software

Google Cloud Platform
Trusted by millions of enterprises
Free plan13 researched notes
Microsoft Azure
Open and flexible cloud services
Free plan11 researched notes
Oracle Cloud
Enterprise cloud computing services
Free plan10 researched notes
Vultr
High performance cloud compute
Free, then $2.5/mo5 researched notes
Wasabi
Hot cloud storage without egress fees
From $7.99/mo12 researched notes
Linode
Affordable cloud hosting and infrastructure
Free, then $5/mo11 researched notes
Hetzner Cloud
Affordable cloud servers in Europe
Free, then €3.29/mo13 researched notes
Neon
Serverless Postgres for modern developers
Free plan10 researched notes
Scaleway
European cloud for developers
Free, then €0.01/hour10 researched notes
Akamai
Leading content delivery and security platform
From $1,000/mo8 researched notes
OVHcloud
Advanced cloud services for businesses
From €3.5/mo9 researched notes
DigitalOcean
The developer cloud
Free, then $4/mo12 researched notes
Fireworks AI
Fast inference and fine-tuning platform for open and custom AI models
Free, then $0.07/mo10 researched notes
Heroku
Cloud Application Platform
From $5/mo13 researched notes
Vault
Manage Secrets and Protect Sensitive Data
Free plan13 researched notes
Beam Cloud
Serverless GPU computing with sub-second cold starts and multi-cloud support
Free, then $89/mo10 researched notes
Caddy
Web server with automatic HTTPS by default
Open source8 researched notes
Cerebrium
Serverless GPU infrastructure for real-time AI inference and applications
Free, then $100/mo10 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for AWS (Amazon Web Services), because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.