Pricing for Amazon S3 is designed so that you don't have to plan for the storage requirements of your application. Most storage providers force you to purchase a pre-determined amount of storage and network transfer capacity: If you exceed that capacity, your service is shut off or you are charged high overage fees. If you do not exceed that capacity, you pay as though you used it all.

Amazon S3 charges you only for what you actually use, with no hidden fees and no overage charges. This gives developers a variable-cost service that can grow with their business while enjoying the cost advantages of Amazon's infrastructure.

Before storing anything in Amazon S3, you need to register with the service and provide a payment instrument that will be charged at the end of each month. There are no set-up fees to begin using the service. At the end of the month, your payment instrument is automatically charged for that month's usage.

For information about paying for Amazon S3 storage, go to the AWS Resource Center.