Amazon CloudWatch RUM Pricing 2026: $0.10/1K Sessions + Gotchas

The fast facts

The pricing model

$1 per 100,000 data events on the CloudWatch pricing page. AWS's own example: 500K visits with 20 events each (10M events) costs $100/month. At ~10 events per session that is roughly $0.10 per 1,000 sessions.

Per-event, not per-session

AWS CloudWatch RUM bills per-event rather than per-session. An “event” is any data point the SDK sends to CloudWatch, page load timing, Core Web Vitals measurements, user interactions, JavaScript errors, custom telemetry, and session replay events. A typical session produces 5-20 events depending on user behaviour and replay configuration. At the $1 per 100K events list price, a session producing 10 events costs $0.0001, or $0.10 per 1,000 sessions.

This is the cheapest published per-session-equivalent rate in our 18-vendor matrix. AWS prices CloudWatch RUM as part of the broader CloudWatch observability suite, where the dominant revenue comes from log ingest and metrics, RUM is treated as a value-add at a competitive rate.

No separate replay meter

AWS added DOM session replay to CloudWatch RUM in May 2026 (an opt-in rrweb plugin that records page snapshots and interactions for visual playback in the console). Unlike Datadog and Dynatrace, which both meter session replay as a separate add-on, AWS treats every captured event as the same unit. You pay $1 per 100K events whether those events are page load timings, Core Web Vitals, or replay snapshots. There is no separate replay meter, no separate replay tier, no replay surcharge.

The catch is that replay is not literally free: each recorded session emits many more billable data events than the ~10 of standard telemetry, so turning replay on materially raises the event count per session and the bill. The $0.10 per 1,000 sessions rate above is for standard RUM with replay off. Even so, the total-cost case is strong. For 1 million sessions/month of standard telemetry, AWS charges roughly $100/month (1M sessions × 10 events × $1/100K). Datadog with full session replay would charge roughly $5,650/month (about $3.15/1K RUM plus its $2.50/1K replay add-on). Enabling heavy replay on AWS narrows that gap, but AWS stays the cheaper option at scale because replay rides the same event meter rather than a premium add-on.

The AWS-native integration story

CloudWatch RUM is built for teams already on AWS. The RUM data flows into CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Metrics, and CloudWatch Dashboards alongside Lambda invocation logs, EC2 metrics, RDS performance insights, and the rest of the AWS observability stack. Cross-product investigations (“why did this page slow down, is it the Lambda backend?”) are native rather than requiring SDK integration between vendors.

For teams not on AWS, CloudWatch RUM still works (the SDK runs in any browser), but the value proposition is significantly weaker. The dashboards are utility-grade rather than product-polish; the alerting workflow assumes CloudWatch alarms; the UX is consistent with the rest of CloudWatch, which is functional but not particularly designed for front-end engineering teams.

30-day retention

Standard CloudWatch retention is 30 days. CloudWatch Logs can be configured for longer retention (with separate storage costs); RUM-specific retention follows the same configuration model.

How AWS CloudWatch RUM compares

• Versus Datadog RUM, AWS is far cheaper per session on standard telemetry (roughly $0.10/1K vs Datadog's ~$3.15/1K plus a separate replay add-on). Datadog has dramatically better dashboards, alerting, integrations, and developer experience. Cost vs polish trade-off.
• Versus Sentry, AWS is cheaper per session but lacks Sentry's mature error tracking, SDK ecosystem, and source-map workflow.
• Versus Cloudflare Web Analytics, Cloudflare is free; AWS is $0.10/1K. Cloudflare has no session replay, no error capture, no custom events. AWS has all three.
• Versus Raygun, Raygun publishes the cheapest commercial per-session RUM ($80/month Basic, billed annually) but AWS's effective rate at scale is even lower if you can live with CloudWatch UX.

When AWS CloudWatch RUM is the right choice

• You run the application primarily on AWS (Lambda, EC2, ECS, Fargate, EKS).
• Your team is fluent in CloudWatch dashboards, alarms, and Insights query language.
• You want a single per-event meter with no separate replay charge on top.
• You are cost-sensitive at scale, AWS is the cheapest RUM at million-session-per-month volumes.

When AWS CloudWatch RUM is the wrong choice

• You run on non-AWS infrastructure, the value proposition is much weaker.
• You need polished engineering dashboards or developer-friendly UX, AWS console is utility-grade.
• You need rich error tracking with source maps and release alerts, Sentry is a much stronger fit.
• You need pre-built integrations to PagerDuty, Slack, GitHub, Datadog and Sentry have richer integration ecosystems.

For AWS on the broader monitoring stack (CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Metrics, X-Ray), see our sister site's AWS monitoring cost breakdown. For the per-session pricing model structural comparison, see per-session pricing models.

Common questions

Try it in the calculator

The RUM cost calculator includes AWS alongside 17 other vendors. Enter your monthly page views, session replay coverage, retention, and sampling rate to see how AWS's pricing compares head-to-head against the alternatives.

Where to go next

• Multi-vendor calculator — estimate AWS's cost against 17 alternatives at your specific workload.
• Per-session pricing models — how AWS's pricing model compares structurally to Datadog, Dynatrace, and Raygun.
• Quote-only vendors — the five RUM vendors that don't publish prices and the operational consequences.
• Hidden RUM costs — sampling, retention storage, replay storage, and overage gotchas across the category.
• Methodology — how we verified the AWS pricing data shown above (verified 2026-06-16).