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Amazon SQS pricing and limits

iScore67–82 · ≈#1/10
aws.amazon.com/sqs · Queues and background jobs
SEPT 2026 audit

AWS managed message queue, billed per request with standard and FIFO rates and a permanent free tier.

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Entry paid planNo paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.
Regions34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.
Free tierYes
CategoryQueues and background jobs

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 21 criteria comparedSources last checked

Amazon SQS pricing at a glance

Entry paid plan
No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month source ↗
Pricing model
Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests source ↗

First line of each sourced value. The full text is in Amazon SQS pricing below. How this free offer stacks up: cloud free tiers compared.

01.Evaluation guide

Who it suits

AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Consider something else if…

Billing is per request rather than per message, and a 1 MiB payload counts as sixteen, so chatty polling or large messages cost far more than the message count suggests.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Amazon SQS does not publish are not listed.

Amazon SQS pricing

4 criteria
Free tierYes
Sources (1) →
Kind of free offerFree tier
Sources (1) →
Entry paid planNo paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.
Sources (1) →
Pricing modelPer request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.
Sources (1) →

Infrastructure

2 criteria
Regions34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.
Sources (1) →
Uptime SLA99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.
Sources (1) →

Queues

6 criteria
Included per month1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion.
Sources (1) →
Maximum message size256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.
Sources (1) →
  • Amazon SQS Pricing — AWS ↗

    “A single request can have from 1 to 10 messages, up to a maximum total payload of 1 MiB. [...] Each 64 KB chunk of a payload is billed as 1 request (for example, an API action with a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests).”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

Message retention4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.
Sources (1) →
Maximum delay15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
Sources (1) →
ConcurrencyApproximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited.
Sources (1) →
Dead letter queueSupported
Sources (1) →
  • Amazon SQS Pricing — AWS ↗

    “API actions for sending, receiving, deleting, and changing visibility of messages from FIFO queues are charged at FIFO rates. All other API requests are charged at standard rates.”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

Compliance

9 criteria
SOC 2Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Sources (1) →
  • AWS Services in Scope — SOC ↗

    “This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) ✓ Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) ✓ Amazon Simple”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

ISO 27001Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
Sources (1) →
HIPAAListed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
Sources (1) →
  • HIPAA Eligible Services Reference — AWS ↗

    “The services listed below are eligible to create, receive, process, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information (ePHI). [...] Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Amazon Simple Workflow”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

GDPR / data residencyAWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
Sources (1) →
  • GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗

    “AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

PCI DSSListed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Sources (1) →
  • AWS Services in Scope — PCI DSS ↗

    “This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) ✓ ✓ Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) ✓ ✓ Amazon Simple”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

Encryption at restServer-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).
Sources (1) →
Customer-managed keysSupported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.
Sources (1) →
Role-based access controlIAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions.
Sources (1) →
Private networking / VPCInterface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.
Sources (1) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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Amazon SQS in the news

Headlines from other publications, not checked by us · collected

Selected by a search on this company, refreshed weekly. Nobody here has verified these claims — where something material is confirmed, it is written into the page above with its source, the way every other fact on this site is.

Amazon SQS pricing questions

How much does Amazon SQS cost?

No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.

Amazon SQS Pricing · read

How does Amazon SQS charge?

Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.

AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 · read

Does Amazon SQS have a free tier?

Yes.

AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 · read

What uptime does Amazon SQS guarantee?

99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.

AWS Messaging Service Level Agreement · read

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.