AWS Pricing Plans for Singapore [2025]

AWS offers countless different services, each delivered flexibly with transparent pricing that makes balancing your monthly budget easy - in theory. But, in reality, this transparency comes with a lot of critical decisions. Which pricing model matches my usage? Which combination of services do I need? How can I get the most bang for my buck?

AWS’s many pricing models suit different workloads and business needs. Let's break down the options available to Singapore businesses in 2025.

For businesses managing cloud services, choosing the right payment method matters just as much as picking the right pricing model. Foreign transaction fees can take a big bite out of your budget when paying in USD. With a Wise Business card, you can pay for your AWS subscription (and all your other international SaaS subscriptions) at the mid-market exchange rate with minimal fees, saving you money on every payment.

Table of contents
AWS pricing overview Six ways to pay for AWS Service-Specific Pricing AWS vs Azure: Cloud Pricing Comparison When to choose AWS When to choose Azure 5 ways to save on your AWS bill AWS pricing FAQs

AWS pricing overview

AWS pricing, at first glance, might seem a bit overwhelming. But at its core, AWS offers a flexible, pay-for-what-you-use approach that adapts to your business needs.

Rather than one-size-fits-all packages, AWS structures its pricing around three fundamental strategies that give you control over your cloud spending. Whether you're a startup looking to minimise initial costs, a growing business with fluctuating workloads, or an enterprise with predictable resource needs, AWS provides pricing options designed to optimise your investment.

Let's take a look at these core strategies to help you make smarter decisions about your cloud budget.

Pay-as-you-go

This is AWS's most flexible option with no long-term commitments. You simply pay for what you use, when you use it. The lack of upfront commitment, however, translates to higher rates.¹

Best for:

• Businesses with fluctuating workloads
• Projects with unpredictable resource needs
• Testing new concepts without big upfront investments
• Startups with limited capital

Key benefits:

• No long-term contracts
• Freedom to adjust resources any time
• Pay only for what you actually use

Commitment-based discounts

Got predictable workloads? Commit to using specific resources for 1-3 years and save up to 72% off standard pay-as-you-go rates.³

Payment options:

• No upfront payment, with monthly payments
• Partial upfront payment
• Full upfront payment, for maximum savings

Key benefits:

• Substantial cost savings (30-72%)
• Guaranteed capacity for critical applications
• Predictable costs for easier budgeting

Volume-based pricing

The more you use, the less you pay per unit. This approach rewards scale and efficiency.

Best for:

• Large enterprises with heavy computing needs
• Growing businesses looking to scale cost-effectively
• Data-intensive operations like S3 storage

---

Six ways to pay for AWS

1. Free tier

Perfect for dipping your toes in before committing your wallet.

	Examples²
Free Trials	Redshift (2 months)
12 Months Free	EC2 t4g.micro instances (750 hrs/month)
Always Free	Lambda (1 million requests/month)

*Details accurate as of 25th April 2025

2. On-Demand pricing

The standard pay-as-you-go option. No commitments, but you'll pay premium rates.

Ideal for:

• Variable or unpredictable workloads
• Development and testing environments
• Short-term projects

This model is perfect for services such as Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), a highly scalable container management service.

3. Spot Instances

Looking for serious savings? Spot Instances let you bid for unused AWS capacity at up to 90% off On-Demand rates.³

How it works:

1. You specify the maximum price you're willing to pay
2. When the market price falls below your bid, instances are automatically launched
3. AWS can reclaim these instances with just two minutes' notice

Best suited for:

• Batch processing jobs
• Data analysis and scientific computing
• Test environments
• Any workload that can handle interruptions

Spot Instances are perfect for services such as Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), a cloud big data platform for processing vast datasets, as it allows for huge savings for irregular workloads.

4. Reserved Instances

Reserve capacity for 1-3 years and save big on predictable workloads.

Types of Reserved Instances:⁶

• Standard RIs (up to 72% off, limited flexibility)
• Convertible RIs (up to 54% off, more flexibility)
• Scheduled RIs (for recurring capacity needs)

Best for:

• Production environments with stable workloads
• Business-critical applications requiring guaranteed capacity
• Long-term projects with well-understood resource requirements

This pricing model is perfect for services like Amazon ElastiCache, a fully managed Redis/Memcached service which would be run consistently.

5. Savings Plans

More flexible than Reserved Instances, Savings Plans require a commitment to spend a certain amount per hour over 1-3 years.

Key advantages:

• Flexibility to change instance types, families, OS, and regions
• Automatic application of discounts across services
• Similar savings to Reserved Instances

Ideal for:

• Organisations with diverse, evolving workloads
• Businesses anticipating growth but seeking cost control

This model works well with services such as AWS Fargate, a serverless compute engine for containers.

6. Dedicated Hosts

Rent entire physical servers for your exclusive use.

Key benefits:

• Complete control over the physical server
• Ability to use your existing software licenses
• Meeting strict compliance requirements

Best for:

• Workloads with specific licensing requirements (Oracle, SQL Server)
• Applications with strict compliance needs
• Legacy applications with dependencies on specific hardware

Dedicated Hosts are essential for services such as Amazon RDS for SQL Server with Bring-Your-Own-License options. Singapore data transfer costs USD 0.12 per GB for the first 10TB per month.

---

Service-Specific Pricing

EC2 Compute

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides secure, resizable compute capacity, letting you rent servers (or instances) to run your apps, websites, or daily tasks. EC2 pricing depends on several key variables:

EC2 Component	Price Factors
Instance Type	vCPU, memory, storage capacity
Operating System	Linux (lower cost) vs Windows (higher cost)
Region	Singapore costs more than US regions
Data Transfer	Free inbound, charged outbound

Cost optimisation tips:

• Choose the right instance family for your workload
• Consider Graviton (ARM) instances for (20%) better price-performance⁵
• Use Auto Scaling to match capacity with demand

S3 Storage

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is an object storage service designed to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time from anywhere. It’s durable, scalable, and secure, with pricing based on storage class and access patterns:

Example Storage Class	Cost (GB-month)⁴	Best For
Standard	USD 0.025	Frequently accessed data
Standard Infrequent Access	USD 0.0138	Infrequently accessed
Glacier Instant Retrieval	USD 0.005	Accessed once per quarter

*Prices for Singapore region as of 25th April 2025

Best practices:

• Implement lifecycle policies to automatically move data between storage classes
• Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering for data with unknown access patterns
• Consider compression for text-based files

Lambda Serverless

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code in response to events, e.g. file uploads, HTTP requests, or database updates, without provisioning or managing servers. You can upload your code and let Lambda do the rest. Lambda provides a truly pay-for-what-you-use model, charing only for the compute time your code consumes:

	Starting Price (Graviton2)⁵	Free Tier⁵
Requests	USD 0.20 per 1M	First 100GiB/month
Duration	USD 0.0000133334/GB-second	400,000 GB-seconds/month

Prices for Singapore region as of 25th April 2025

Cost optimisation strategies:⁵

• Use Graviton2 ARM architecture, rather than x86, for up to 34% cost savings
• Optimise function code to reduce execution duration
• Choose appropriate memory allocation
• Save up to 17% with Compute Savings Plans

DynamoDB Database

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database with single-digit millisecond performance, perfect for apps that need consistent latency at any scale. It offers two different capacity modes:

Capacity Mode	Best For	Cost Comparison
On-Demand	Variable, unpredictable traffic	Higher per-request cost, no minimum
Provisioned	Steady, predictable traffic	Approx. 50% cheaper, but must manage capacity

Tips to reduce costs:

• Choose the right capacity mode for your usage pattern
• Use Auto Scaling with Provisioned capacity
• Design access patterns to minimise operations

---

AWS vs Azure: Cloud Pricing Comparison

When considering cloud providers, AWS isn't your only option. Microsoft Azure is a strong competitor with its own pricing advantages.

Here's how they compare:

	AWS	Azure
Basic Billing	Per-second billing (60s minimum)	Per-minute billing
Reserved Instances	Up to 72% discount for 1-3 year commitments	Up to 72% discount⁸
Spot Pricing	Up to 90% discount, 2-minute termination notice	Up to 65% discount⁹
Free Tier	12-month free tier with limited services	USD 200 credit for 1 month + 12-month services¹⁰
Hybrid Licensing	No native hybrid licensing program	Azure Hybrid Benefit saves approximately 36%¹¹
Data Transfer (Singapore)	USD 0.12/GB (first 10TB)	USD 0.12/GB (first 10TB)⁷

*Prices accurate as of 25.04.2025

---

When to choose AWS

AWS might be your best option when:

• You need maximum pricing granularity with per-second billing
• You're running long-term predictable workloads and want the deepest Reserved Instance discounts
• You require specialised compute instances (like GPU-optimised)

AWS offers unbeatable long-term commitment savings across a huge range of services. And these kinds of cost-savings are hard to pass up. The per-second billing also provides finer cost control for short-lived workloads compared to Azure's per-minute model. So, ultimately, AWS favours the cost-conscious.

When to choose Azure

Azure tends to be the better choice when:

• You're integrating with Microsoft ecosystems (Active Directory, Office 365)
• You have existing Windows/SQL Server licenses to leverage via Hybrid Benefit
• Enterprise-grade SLAs and compliance tools are high priorities

For enterprises with existing Microsoft infrastructure, Azure's Hybrid Benefit provides unparalleled savings by leveraging on-premises Windows/SQL Server licenses - a capability AWS lacks. Azure's USD 200 introductory credit and always-free services also provide better initial experimentation opportunities compared to AWS's 12-month free tier.

Most enterprises end up adopting a multi-cloud strategy, using AWS for scale-out workloads and Azure for Microsoft-centric environments. Your best choice depends on your specific workload patterns, existing investments, and feature requirements.

---

5 ways to save on your AWS bill

1. Choose the right pricing model

As with all SaaS subscriptions, it’s vital that you match your pricing model to your workload patterns. Stable workloads? Go for Reserved Instances. Variable workloads? Consider a mix of On-Demand and Spot Instances. AWS Budgets can help you track spending and action changes within your AWS dashboard.¹²

2. Rightsize your resources

Many businesses overprovision. Regularly check if your instances match your actual needs. AWS Cost Explorer provides rightsizing recommendations, and AWS Compute Optimizer provides specific EC2/EBS recommendations.

3. Schedule non-production resources

Development environments don't need to run 24/7. Automatically shut them down during off-hours and save up to 50%.

4. Implement storage lifecycle management

Move infrequently accessed S3 data to cheaper storage classes. Consider upgrading from gp2 to gp3 EBS volumes for better performance at the same or lower cost.¹³

5. Pay smarter with Wise Business

AWS bills in 14 different currencies, including SGD, so in a way the AWS Currency Converter can help you avoid unnecessary foreign transaction fees.

However, do note that the currency conversion is provided by Amazon Services LLC - which begs the question:

Is there a hidden exchange rate markup being applied?

If you’d rather avoid the potential markup and pay your AWS bill using a card, you can consider using Wise Business Card. It allows you to pay for your subscription without any hidden foreign transaction fees, and you'll always get the mid-market rate.

With a Wise Business Card, you can use the card in 150+ countries - perfect for managing not just AWS but all your international SaaS subscriptions.

➡️ Get Wise Business Card for Smart Savings

*Wise Business pricing/fees: Please see Terms of Use for your region or visit Wise Fees & Pricing for the most up-to-date pricing and fee information.

---

AWS pricing FAQs

Does AWS have a free tier for Singapore businesses?

Yes! New customers get 12 months of limited free usage for common services, plus some always-free services with no expiration date. It's perfect for experimenting with AWS before committing.

What currency does AWS bill in for Singapore?

AWS bills Singapore customers in USD by default, but the AWS Currency Converter gives you the option of paying in 14 currencies. If you’re looking to consolidate all your international payments and save on foreign transaction fees, consider using a multi-currency account card like Wise Business.

Is AWS more expensive in Singapore than other regions?

The Singapore region typically costs 10-15% more than US regions. For example, data transfer out costs USD 0.12/GB for the first 10TB per month for Singapore businesses, compared to USD 0.09 for US businesses. However, it offers better performance for Southeast Asian users with lower latency and can reduce data transfer costs for applications serving the local market.

Are there implementation or onboarding fees?

For standard implementations, no. Enterprise customers with complex migration needs might need AWS Professional Services, which come at an additional cost.

---

Conclusion

AWS pricing offers remarkable flexibility to match your business needs, from pay-as-you-go for maximum flexibility to long-term commitments for maximum savings. The right choice depends on your specific workload characteristics, business requirements, and growth projections.

By applying a combination of the cost optimisation strategies outlined above - from choosing the right pricing model to implementing lifecycle policies and auto-scaling - you can significantly reduce your AWS spending without sacrificing performance.

💡For Singapore businesses, combining strategic AWS pricing choices with efficient payment methods like the Wise Business Card is a powerful approach to controlling cloud service costs. This not only reduces direct service costs but also eliminates unnecessary costs such as foreign transaction fees and exchange rate markups, maximising the value of your cloud investment.

• Hold and manage 40+ currencies for all your international transactions
• Pay your SaaS bills and all ad-hoc overseas expenses with the Wise Business card without the hefty foreign transaction fees
• Always get the mid-market rate with zero exchange rate markup
• Seamless integrations with popular accounting software
• Say goodbye to monthly fees

➡️Get Started with Wise Business Today

---

Sources:

1. AWS Pricing
2. AWS Free Tier
3. AWS Savings Plans
4. AWS S3 Storage Pricing
5. AWS Lambda Pricing
6. AWS EC2 Reserved Instances
7. Azure Data Transfer Pricing
8. Azure Reservations
9. Azure Savings Plans
10. Azure Free Trial
11. Azure Hybrid Benefit
12. AWS Budgets
13. AWS Cost Optimisation Strategies

Sources checked on 25.04.2025.