At this point, you may be asking yourself how much does AWS Direct Connect cost?

And to some degree, it gives me great pleasure to say, 'It depends', because that's the answer to seemingly every technology-based question these days. AWS Direct Connect has two billing elements: Port hours and Data Transfer Out (DTO). Port hours represent the amount of time in AWS Direct Connect port has been provisioned for your use even if no data is passing through the port. Conceptually, think of Direct Connect port hours as you would in on-demand EC2 instance. If that instance is powered on, you are paying for it even if you're not using it. Data Transfer Out refers to the cumulative amount of data transferred through the AWS Direct Connect to destinations outside of AWS and is charged per gigabyte. The exact pricing depends on the AWS region and Direct Connect location used by the customer.

Fortunately, you can use the AWS pricing calculator to estimate the cost of AWS Direct Connect. On the pricing example shown here, the port hours cost of a single 1 GB dedicated connection with 100% utilization hosted at the core site facility in Northern Virginia will cost $219 a month. DTO can have a significant impact on the monthly cost of AWS Direct Connect. In the example shown here, the cost of transferring 100 TB through the direct connect to destinations outside of AWS will cost $2,048 a month. As you can see, it's important to understand how applications and data will use the Direct Connect to properly and accurately estimate its cost to your organization.