AWS Elastic File System (EFS) Pricing
Amazon EFS provides serverless, fully elastic POSIX-compliant shared file storage for AWS cloud services and on-premises resources. Compare storage tiers (Standard, IA, Archive, One Zone), throughput modes (Elastic, Provisioned, Bursting), and simulate monthly total costs across all 36 global regions.
EFS Storage Tiers
Multi-AZ regional durability vs. single-AZ low cost optionsStandard (Multi-AZ)
$0.3000 / GB-month (us-east-1)
Default storage tier for actively used file system data. Highly durable and replicated across multiple Availability Zones with sub-millisecond latencies.
- Durability: 99.999999999% (11 9s)
- Availability: 99.99%
- Data Access: None (Included)
- Best for: Active data, latency-sensitive workloads, web serving, CI/CD
Infrequent Access (IA)
$0.0250 / GB-month (us-east-1)
Cost-optimized tier for files accessed only a few times per month. Up to 92% cheaper storage with low single-digit millisecond latency.
- Durability: 99.999999999% (11 9s)
- Availability: 99.9%
- Data Access: $0.01 / GB read/write
- Best for: Backups, inactive files, compliance archives, audit logs
EFS Archive
$0.0080 / GB-month (us-east-1)
Lowest-cost EFS tier for rarely accessed cold data (accessed once or twice a year), saving up to 97% over Standard while retaining instant file system access.
- Durability: 99.999999999% (11 9s)
- Availability: 99.9%
- Data Access: $0.03 / GB read/tiering
- Best for: Long-term file retention, regulatory compliance, cold datasets
One Zone (Single-AZ)
$0.1600 / GB-month (us-east-1)
Reduces storage costs by 47% compared to Regional Standard by storing data redundantly within a single Availability Zone.
- Durability: 99.999999999% (single AZ)
- Availability: 99.5%
- Data Access: None (Included)
- Best for: Development/test environments, build artifacts, recreatable data
One Zone-IA
$0.0133 / GB-month (us-east-1)
Combines One Zone single-AZ architecture with Infrequent Access pricing for the lowest-cost single-AZ shared file storage.
- Durability: 99.999999999% (single AZ)
- Availability: 99.5%
- Data Access: $0.01 / GB read/write
- Best for: Single-AZ batch processing outputs, staging data, test backups
Throughput Modes
Pay-per-GB transferred or provision dedicated file system throughputElastic Throughput
$0.03 / GB read • $0.06 / GB write
Automatically scales throughput dynamically with application workload without provisioning. Best for spiky, unpredictable traffic or modern microservices.
- Max Read: Up to 10 GiB/s
- Max Write: Up to 3 GiB/s
- Billing: Pay only for data read & written
Provisioned Throughput
$6.00 / MiBps-month (above included)
Guarantees dedicated throughput capacity independent of stored volume size. Useful for small storage footprints that require continuous high throughput.
- Included: 50 KB/s per GB stored free
- Extra Capacity: $6.00 / MiBps-month (us-east-1)
- Billing: Flat hourly rate per provisioned MiB/s
Bursting Throughput
Included with Standard Storage
Baseline throughput scales at 50 KB/s per GB of Standard storage, bursting up to 100+ MiB/s using accumulated burst credits.
- Baseline Rate: 50 KiB/s per GiB stored
- Burst Rate: Up to 100 MiB/s+ (credit based)
- Billing: No additional charges
Regional Pricing Comparison
On-demand storage, access, and throughput rates across AWS regions| Region | Total Monthly Cost | Standard ($/GB-mo) | IA ($/GB-mo) | Archive ($/GB-mo) | One Zone ($/GB-mo) | IA Access ($/GB) | Elastic Read ($/GB) | Provisioned ($/MiBps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| us-east-1 US East (N. Virginia) | — | $0.3000 | $0.0250 | $0.0080 | $0.1600 | $0.0100 | $0.0300 | $6.00 |
| us-east-2 US East (Ohio) | — | $0.3000 | $0.0250 | $0.0080 | $0.1600 | $0.0100 | $0.0300 | $6.00 |
| us-west-2 US West (Oregon) | — | $0.3000 | $0.0250 | $0.0080 | $0.1600 | $0.0100 | $0.0300 | $6.00 |
| us-west-1 US West (N. California) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0283 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| ca-central-1 Canada (Central) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| ca-west-1 Canada West (Calgary) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| eu-west-1 EU (Ireland) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0250 | $0.0080 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| eu-central-1 EU (Frankfurt) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0266 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| eu-west-2 EU (London) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0261 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| eu-west-3 EU (Paris) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0261 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| eu-north-1 EU (Stockholm) | — | $0.3000 | $0.0250 | $0.0080 | $0.1600 | $0.0100 | $0.0300 | $6.00 |
| eu-south-1 EU (Milan) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0260 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| eu-south-2 Europe (Spain) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0250 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| eu-central-2 Europe (Zurich) | — | $0.4300 | $0.0295 | $0.0110 | — | $0.0140 | $0.0400 | $8.58 |
| ap-northeast-1 Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| ap-northeast-2 Asia Pacific (Seoul) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| ap-northeast-3 Asia Pacific (Osaka) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| ap-southeast-1 Asia Pacific (Singapore) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| ap-southeast-2 Asia Pacific (Sydney) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| ap-southeast-3 Asia Pacific (Jakarta) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| ap-southeast-4 Asia Pacific (Melbourne) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0120 | $0.0360 | $7.20 |
| ap-southeast-5 Asia Pacific (Malaysia) | — | $0.3240 | $0.0245 | $0.0090 | — | $0.0110 | $0.0360 | $6.48 |
| ap-southeast-6 Asia Pacific (New Zealand) | — | $0.3780 | $0.0286 | $0.0105 | — | $0.0126 | $0.0420 | $7.56 |
| ap-southeast-7 Asia Pacific (Thailand) | — | $0.3240 | $0.0245 | $0.0090 | — | $0.0110 | $0.0360 | $6.48 |
| ap-east-1 Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) | — | $0.3900 | $0.0270 | $0.0100 | $0.2080 | $0.0130 | $0.0400 | $7.80 |
| ap-east-2 Asia Pacific (Taipei) | — | $0.3240 | $0.0245 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0108 | $0.0380 | $6.84 |
| ap-south-1 Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | $0.1760 | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| ap-south-2 Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) | — | $0.3300 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0110 | $0.0300 | $6.60 |
| sa-east-1 South America (Sao Paulo) | — | $0.5700 | $0.0440 | $0.0166 | $0.3040 | $0.0190 | $0.0600 | $11.40 |
| mx-central-1 Mexico (Central) | — | $0.3150 | $0.0262 | $0.0084 | — | $0.0105 | $0.0315 | $6.30 |
| me-central-1 Middle East (UAE) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0270 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| me-south-1 Middle East (Bahrain) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0270 | $0.0100 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| il-central-1 Israel (Tel Aviv) | — | $0.4000 | $0.0272 | $0.0100 | — | $0.0132 | $0.0396 | $8.00 |
| af-south-1 Africa (Cape Town) | — | $0.3900 | $0.0300 | $0.0100 | $0.2080 | $0.0130 | $0.0400 | $7.80 |
| us-gov-east-1 AWS GovCloud (US-East) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0424 | $0.0128 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
| us-gov-west-1 AWS GovCloud (US-West) | — | $0.3600 | $0.0424 | $0.0128 | $0.1920 | $0.0120 | $0.0400 | $7.20 |
EFS Cost Architecture & Optimization Guide
Key principles for running elastic file systems cost-effectively1. Lifecycle Management & Automatic Tiering
Configure EFS Lifecycle Management with transition to Infrequent Access (e.g. 14 or 30 days since last access) and transition to Archive (e.g. 90 days). For file systems where 80% of data is cold, storage cost drops from $0.30/GB to an effective blend of ~$0.08/GB — saving ~73% to 92% automatically without code changes.
2. Elastic vs. Provisioned Throughput Decision
Use Elastic Throughput for any application where average throughput is below 5% of peak throughput or traffic fluctuates (web apps, dev tools, ML inference, containers). Use Provisioned Throughput only when workloads require high, steady-state baseline throughput continuously 24/7.
3. Multi-AZ Regional vs. One Zone Storage
Regional EFS replicates data across 3+ Availability Zones for 11 9s durability and 99.99% availability. If your workload is containerized in a single AZ or is a build/test cache that can be recreated, One Zone saves 47% on storage with no egress fees when accessed from the same AZ.
4. Connecting from Lambda, ECS, EKS & EC2
EFS supports standard NFSv4.1/4.0 protocols with POSIX permissions. It creates a dedicated elastic VPC Mount Target in each subnet, allowing thousands of simultaneous connections with low overhead and automatic scaling.