After Google Cloud abolished its own egress fees, the competition was always likely to follow suit. AWS is broadening its policy by making data transfers from its cloud service free from now on.
This is not the first time AWS has made a similar change. In 2021, for example, it already raised the amount of data allowed to migrate. Until now, that has been 100 GB per month. It meant that more than 90 percent of AWS customers were already not paying egress fees, making the new move mostly symbolic.
However, the new announcement remains a positive, especially now that AWS is reminding all customers that more is now possible at no extra cost. Anyone wishing to transfer more than 100 GB per month to on-prem or another cloud service can now contact AWS. The customer in question will then receive the credits needed to perform the data transfer.
Google trendsetter
Until now, AWS offered the same free egress capacity as Microsoft on Azure. There, too, users can transfer up to 100GB at no additional cost. Google Cloud surpassed this in September 2023 with 200GB and decided to discontinue it altogether in January. It may therefore be a matter of time before Microsoft too makes the option free.
Despite now making it easier for cloud customers to move away from AWS, the hyperscaler reminds us of the many services that reside within this public cloud. Those, by the way, remain relatively quick to come back to, as customers leaving do not have to stop their accounts. It’s just not possible to make regular use of the free egress option. DTO (Data transfer out of internet) should be a one-time process, so AWS says it will take extra care with accounts that request it multiple times.
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