Amazon CloudWatch RUM Pricing 2026: $1.00/1K Sessions + Gotchas
Amazon CloudWatch RUM pricing for 2026. $1 per 100,000 events on the standard rate. Session replay (a subset of events) is included free at the event meter. Effective per-session rate is approximately $0.10 per 1,000 sessions assuming ~10 events per session.
The fast facts
| Pricing model | per-session |
| Cheapest paid | Quote only |
| Per 1,000 sessions | $1.00 |
| Per GB ingest | , |
| Per 1,000 replays | , |
| Free tier | First-time free trial: 1 million web RUM events per account |
| Session replay | bundled |
| Retention | 30 days |
| Annual discount | Not published |
| Source | aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/ |
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.
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.
Session replay is bundled free
Unlike Datadog (bundled into per-session price) or Dynatrace (separately metered add-on), AWS CloudWatch RUM treats session replay events as the same unit as any other event. You pay $1 per 100K events whether those events are page load timings or replay snapshots. There is no separate replay meter, no separate replay tier, no replay surcharge.
This is the strongest cost case for AWS CloudWatch RUM. For a workload at 100% replay coverage on 1 million sessions/month, AWS would charge roughly $100/month (1M sessions × 10 events × $1/100K). Datadog at $4.50/1K bundled would charge $4,500/month. The difference is 45x.
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 roughly 45x cheaper per session including replay. 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 RUM ($80/year Basic) 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 session replay bundled at the same low per-event rate as the rest of your telemetry.
- 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.
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).