Metering and billing

Amazon Athena meters the amount of data Athena must read to satisfy your query. The data your query reads is then billed at the rate of $5 per terabyte. This pricing model's simplicity makes it easy to quickly estimate how much the query you are about to run might cost. If your table is 1 terabyte in size, it's a reasonably safe assumption that querying such a table should not cost more than $5. You might think that this is the end of the pricing conversation, and for all practical purposes, it is. However, in classic AWS fashion, the model's simplicity hides the real value of what that $5 is actually buying you.

As of this writing, several alternative offerings are also charging $5/TB scanned for a similarly rich SQL interface. Beyond informing you of how Athena is priced, the goal of this section is to help you understand what that $5/TB is buying.

Let's double-click on the metering aspect first. Amazon Athena charges you for the bytes...