Amazon ECS Adds LiveTaskCount, and RunningTaskCount Is Now Free

Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan! There's a nice update to ECS metrics, so let me walk you through it.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

AWS What's New announced two ECS updates:

• A new service metric, LiveTaskCount, is available to all customers at no additional charge
• The CloudWatch Container Insights RunningTaskCount metric no longer incurs a charge

The story so far

For task counts, there was the Container Insights RunningTaskCount metric. It counts tasks whose current and desired states are both RUNNING, and using it came with Container Insights charges.

What changes

• Tasks on their way to stopping, such as those draining connections during scale-in, are now counted too
• You can use it without enabling Container Insights
• If you already rely on RunningTaskCount, you can keep using it with no extra charge

Dive Deep

Here is how the two metrics differ:

• LiveTaskCount: counts tasks in ACTIVATING, RUNNING, and DEACTIVATING. It is part of ECS service utilization metrics and needs no Container Insights opt-in. The announcement positions it for autoscaling policies and capacity planning, where you need a complete view of active, metric-generating tasks
• RunningTaskCount: counts tasks whose current and desired states are both RUNNING. It continues to work as a health and stability signal

The pricing change takes effect October 1, 2026, and applies automatically. Both updates are available in all Regions where Amazon ECS is available, and no action is required.

See the LiveTaskCount docs, the Container Insights metrics, and CloudWatch pricing for details.

Wrap-up

• LiveTaskCount counts ACTIVATING, RUNNING, and DEACTIVATING tasks together
• LiveTaskCount is free and needs no Container Insights opt-in
• RunningTaskCount has no additional charge starting October 1, 2026
• Available in all ECS Regions, with no action required

This is a good one if you want to revisit your ECS autoscaling or capacity planning!