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Managed DNS and traffic routing · by Amazon Web Services

Amazon Route 53

AWS's authoritative DNS at $0.50 per zone plus $0.40 per million queries, with latency, geo, weighted and failover routing and free queries to AWS alias targets.

Visit aws.amazon.com ↗ Alternatives Paid EU region
Amazon Route 53 homepage
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Overview

Route 53 is the managed DNS service in AWS. It answers public DNS for your domains, hosts private zones inside VPCs, registers domains, and runs health checks that can steer traffic away from failed endpoints. Routing policies cover weighted, latency-based, geolocation, geoproximity, IP-based, multivalue and failover answers.

Pricing is pay as you go: $0.50 per hosted zone per month for the first 25 zones, then $0.10, plus $0.40 per million standard queries. Advanced routing policies cost more per query. There is no free plan, but alias queries to AWS resources and all private-zone queries are free, so an AWS-hosted site pays mainly the zone fee.

The flat-rate CloudFront plans launched in 2025 include Route 53 DNS for the protected domain, which can be cheaper for a single website. Outside AWS, costs remain small but you will be managing DNS through the AWS console, IAM and API.

Route 53 also includes Resolver for recursive DNS inside VPCs and on-premises networks, and Resolver DNS Firewall to filter outbound queries. Query logs are free to generate, but storing them in CloudWatch is billed, so large zones should budget for logging separately.

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Pricing and plans

Plan Price What you get
Hosted zone $0.50/mo First 25 zones; $0.10/mo each after; up to 10,000 records per zone
Standard queries $0.40 per million First 1 billion a month; $0.20 per million after
Latency routing queries $0.60 per million Geo and geoproximity $0.70, IP-based $0.80 per million
Traffic Flow $50/mo per policy record Visual routing policies

Hosted zone charges are not prorated; a zone deleted within 12 hours is not charged. Records beyond 10,000 per zone cost $0.0015 each per month. Queries on private hosted zones and on alias records to supported AWS services (CloudFront, ELB, API Gateway, S3 websites and others) are free. Query logging incurs CloudWatch charges. Domain registration is priced per TLD. Up to 50 health checks for AWS endpoints are offered at no extra cost; other health-check prices were not captured.

Source: aws.amazon.com/route53/pricing/ · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

Routing policies
Weighted, latency, geolocation, geoproximity, IP-based, multivalue and failover routing.
Alias records
Point the zone apex at CloudFront, ELB, S3 websites and other AWS resources, with no query charge.
Private DNS
Private hosted zones for VPCs; queries are free.
DNSSEC
DNSSEC signing for public hosted zones and validation in Route 53 Resolver.
Health checks and failover
Monitor endpoints and fail over automatically; up to 50 AWS-endpoint health checks at no extra cost.
Domain registration
Register or transfer domains and configure DNS automatically.
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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Low, fully published per-zone and per-query prices.
  • Free alias queries to AWS resources and free private-zone queries.
  • Rich routing policies and health-check failover.
  • Covered by AWS compliance programmes such as SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP.

Limitations

  • No free plan for standalone DNS hosting; each zone costs at least $0.50 a month.
  • Zone charges are not prorated for partial months.
  • Queries for non-existent records or mismatched types are billed at the standard rate.
  • Traffic Flow policies cost $50 per policy record per month.
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Who it suits

Good for

  • Applications hosted on AWS
  • Teams needing latency or geo routing with health checks
  • Companies wanting private DNS inside VPCs

Look elsewhere if

  • Hobby projects wanting free DNS
  • Teams that want DNS bundled with a proxy CDN outside AWS
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Alternatives to Amazon Route 53

Tool From Free option Stages
DNSimple DNS hosting and domain management
$0.5/mo Paid
INWX Domain registrar
$15.72/yr Paid
Azure DNS Managed public and private DNS
$0.5/mo Paid
Google Cloud DNS Managed authoritative and private DNS
$0.2/mo Paid
Amazon CloudFront CDN with bundled WAF and DNS plans
$15/mo Free tier
Cloudflare CDN, DNS, WAF and DDoS protection
$20/mo Free tier

All CDN, DNS and edge security →

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Questions

How much does Route 53 cost per domain?

$0.50 per hosted zone per month for the first 25 zones, plus $0.40 per million standard queries.

Are Route 53 alias queries free?

Yes, when the alias points to supported AWS resources such as CloudFront, ELB, API Gateway or S3 website endpoints.

Does Route 53 support DNSSEC?

Yes, for public hosted zones, plus DNSSEC validation in Route 53 Resolver.

Does Route 53 have a free tier?

Not for standalone hosted zones, but CloudFront flat-rate plans (including the $0 Free plan) include Route 53 DNS.

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