AWS Direct Connect Says Goodbye to Unpredictable Dedicated-Connection Costs with New Flat-Rate Pricing!

Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan! Today's news makes network costs a lot easier to predict, so let's take a look!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

This comes from AWS What's New. AWS Direct Connect now offers flat-rate pricing for 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps Dedicated Connections. Direct Connect provides dedicated network connectivity from on-premises environments to AWS, and this adds a new pricing model built around a fixed monthly fee, regardless of data transfer volume.

The story so far

Direct Connect has always used pay-as-you-go pricing, billing for port hours and data transfer out (DTO) with no upfront commitment or long-term contract. That flexibility is great, but for workloads with large, sustained DTO, per-gigabyte charges could swing month to month as traffic grew, making costs hard to predict.

What changes

With flat-rate pricing, you pay a single fixed monthly fee based on your connection's bandwidth and the geographic scope of your connectivity. Within your chosen pricing tier, there are no more per-gigabyte DTO charges, so your bill stays the same no matter how much your traffic grows. That's a great fit for network architects, enterprise IT teams, and FinOps practitioners who want predictable, fixed-line-item budgeting.

Pricing is configured per connection, and you can switch between pay-as-you-go and flat-rate billing on a connection at any time.

Dive Deep

Flat-rate pricing uses five geographic tiers (Tier 1 through Tier 5), ranging from same-metro to global coverage, so you can pick the scope that matches your traffic patterns. Rather than usage-based billing, you pay a fixed hourly rate determined by your connection's bandwidth and pricing tier.

The other new concept is the "port-pair." A port-pair is two dedicated Direct Connect ports, provisioned on different devices or locations at the same pricing tier, giving you built-in redundancy — if one port goes down, connectivity continues. One important detail: a 10 Gbps port-pair still gives you 10 Gbps of effective capacity, not 20 Gbps. The redundant port doesn't double your bandwidth.

Flat-rate pricing is available at all AWS Direct Connect locations across all commercial AWS Regions (China Regions excluded), and it applies exclusively to Dedicated Connections. For the full tier breakdown, port-pair configurations, and eligibility requirements, check the AWS Direct Connect Flat-Rate Pricing page, User Guide, and Pricing Guide.

Wrap-up

• Flat-rate pricing added for 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps Dedicated Connections
• Fixed monthly fee based on bandwidth and geographic scope, with no DTO charges within your chosen tier
• Five geographic tiers (Tier 1–5) ranging from same-metro to global coverage
• New "port-pair" concept adds built-in redundancy (note: it doesn't double your bandwidth)
• Billing mode is configured per connection and can be switched anytime
• Available at Direct Connect locations across all commercial Regions except China

A great fit for enterprise IT teams and FinOps practitioners running steady, high-volume traffic who want their network costs to be a predictable, fixed line item!