Following Google Cloud’s initiative to no longer charge clients egress fees when leaving their cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it will likewise no longer charge for data transfer out to the Internet (DTO) when users decide to migrate their data away from AWS.
In its blog post yesterday, AWS says this policy change is in line with the industry trend towards interoperability and data portability while highlighting AWS’s commitment to user autonomy and cloud migration simplicity.
Since AWS already offers 100 gigabytes of free Internet data transfer per month from AWS Regions, the vast majority of AWS users – more than 90%, according to AWS itself – won’t notice any changes to their pricing for data transfer out of AWS. This advantage would include traffic from many services, such as Application Load Balancer, Amazon EC2, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Additionally, each month, one terabyte of free data transfer is offered via Amazon CloudFront.
Big Cloud Users: Contact AWS Support
AWS has established arrangements to accommodate clients that need monthly transfers of over 100 gigabytes or more. Cloud customers need to make these arrangements with AWS Support. Such an arrangement via AWS Support would include free DTO rates for any extra data required for migration. Following an approval procedure and review at the AWS account level, credits for the transferred data will be awarded to the authorized migrations.
Crucially, AWS has emphasized a no-strings-attached approach to data mobility by stating that users are not obliged to end their accounts or change their continuing connection with the service.
AWS’ move would conform with the objectives outlined in the European Data Act. The European Data Act, which has certain requirements on how client data is handled, shared, and accessed, is anticipated to take effect in September 2025. One of those laws aims to shield EU businesses from unfair contractual terms, while another stipulates that they must be free to move between cloud service providers (CSPs) without incurring egress fees. It is basically intended to stop cloud infrastructure providers from engaging in what is known as ‘vendor lock-in.’
AWS currently offers more than 200 cloud services in a wide range of categories, such as computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and many more. With widely accessible instances (more than 750), AWS’s Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) would stand out with its cloud services in the global market. AWS claims that by abolishing DTO fees, it is establishing a new benchmark for cloud service providers and highlighting the significance of regulatory compliance and user empowerment.
