AWS · Free tool
Snapshot storage looks incremental until you count the retention chain. Plug in source volume size, retention window, and daily churn, or enter retained GB directly from your inventory, and see the monthly bill.
Estimated monthly snapshot storage
$0
$0 per year
| Billable GB | 0 |
|---|---|
| Storage detail | — |
| vs live gp3 volume | — |
If billable GB exceeds source volume size, review DLM yearly tiers, orphaned snapshots after volume deletion, and AMI snapshot chains from image pipelines that never deregister old AMIs.
The EC2 line shows running instances. Snapshot storage bills under EBS or Amazon EBS Snapshots in Cost Explorer. Teams that budget compute but not backup history get surprised when a retention change doubles a line that was already four figures.
Why does snapshot storage exceed the source volume size?
Snapshots are incremental at the block level, but retained history accumulates unique changed blocks across every snapshot in the chain. A 1 TB volume with 5 percent daily churn and 30-day retention can hold 2 to 4 TB of billable snapshot data depending on write patterns.
What is the standard snapshot rate?
Most US regions charge $0.05 per GB-month for standard EBS snapshot storage. Archive-tier snapshots are cheaper but have retrieval latency. Override the rate field if your account uses a private pricing agreement.
How do I find orphaned snapshots?
Run describe-snapshots with owner-ids self, then check whether each VolumeId still exists. Snapshots whose source volume was deleted continue billing until the snapshot itself is removed.
