Question: Does DynamoDB charge for storage?

Answer

Yes. DynamoDB charges for stored table and index data, regardless of whether you use on-demand or provisioned throughput. Charges depend on the Region, table class and billable storage size.

In US East (N. Virginia), Standard storage is $0.25 per GB-month, with the first 25 GB covered by the monthly Standard allowance per Region and payer account. Standard-IA storage is $0.10 per GB-month and has no free storage allowance. Its read and write prices are higher, so cheaper storage does not automatically mean a cheaper table.

Billable storage includes attribute names, values and per-item overhead. Secondary indexes add their own stored entries, and each global-table replica stores a full regional copy. Removing attributes from API results does not reduce the data stored on disk.

Backups and point-in-time recovery have separate charges. An idle table can therefore keep generating costs even without application requests. Deleting expired items through TTL can reduce storage after deletion occurs, but expired items still count while they remain in the table.

Compare your Region and access pattern in the pricing calculator, and use the item-size calculator to estimate record sizes.

Source: AWS DynamoDB pricing.