How Much does CloudWatch Logs Cost

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Free Tier 5GB Data
• Paid Account is Cheap
• Delivery to S3 is Cheaper
• Cleanup the Unused CloudWatch Logs
• Conclusion

Introduction

So CloudWatch logs are not free, but there's no up-front cost and the price is cheap to get started. Here are a few things you can pay attention to regarding CloudWatch logs.

Free Tier 5GB Data

Lots of AWS services will automatically send logs to CloudWatch Logs. For example, Lambda functions, ECS, or CodeBuild. You can, of course, turn off the logs depending on the service. 5GB should be a good amount of free tier if you are starting as an individual.

Paid Account is Cheap

For a paid account, or after the free tier, you'll be charged $0.03 per GB for storage. If you store 100GB of logs, it will cost you $3 per month. It also charges when collecting data or analyzing the data, at $0.50 per GB and $0.03 per GB respectively.

Delivery to S3 is Cheaper

It seems like storing the logs in S3 might be cheaper based on the AWS documentation. For instance, if you store the VPC flow logs in CloudWatch Logs, it will cost you $0.50 per GB, but if you choose to deliver them to S3, it will cost you $0.25 per GB.

Cleanup the Unused CloudWatch Logs

To check the CloudWatch logs, first go to CloudWatch in AWS, then click the Logs section and you'll see all the Log Groups. Sometimes you might have some unused logs — AWS services have already been deleted but their logs are still there. You might want to clean them up once in a while. By default, all logs' retention is set to never expire.

Conclusion

CloudWatch logs are cheap to get started. Don't forget that data ingestion and log analysis will cost you money. Also remember to delete unused logs to save money.