Provisioned Kinesis data streams with no records written or read for 30 days

A provisioned stream pays for shards, not records

In provisioned mode, Kinesis Data Streams pricing charges for each shard at an hourly rate, with each shard providing 1 MB per second or 1,000 records per second of ingest. The shard-hours run whether producers write anything or not. A stream created for a pipeline that was later rebuilt elsewhere keeps its shard bill indefinitely.

On-demand mode works differently: it bills per stream-hour plus data ingested and retrieved, so an empty on-demand stream still has an hourly charge, but no shard capacity to remove.

Checking a stream’s traffic

aws kinesis list-streams \
  --query 'StreamSummaries[].[StreamName,StreamModeDetails.StreamMode,StreamStatus]'

aws kinesis describe-stream-summary --stream-name clickstream \
  --query 'StreamDescriptionSummary.[OpenShardCount,ConsumerCount,StreamModeDetails.StreamMode]'

aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics --namespace AWS/Kinesis --metric-name IncomingRecords \
  --dimensions Name=StreamName,Value=clickstream \
  --start-time 2026-08-26T00:00:00Z --end-time 2026-09-25T00:00:00Z \
  --period 86400 --statistics Sum

Repeat with GetRecords.Records. AWS documents both metrics with the StreamName dimension.

Both directions must be quiet

The rule reads write activity (IncomingRecords) and read activity (GetRecords.Records) together. Each series must be present, cover at least 30 days, and stay below 1 record on both the average and the maximum. A stream nobody writes to but a consumer still polls, or one being written to with no reader yet, is not flagged. The stream also needs a positive monthly price.

Streams outside the rule

On-demand streams are skipped, because they have no shard capacity to reclaim. A stream reporting zero shards is skipped for the same reason. When the shard count is unknown, the stream is treated as provisioned and goes on to the metric test. A missing metric series stops the finding rather than counting as zero. ZopNight also ships this finding switched off by default, so it may not appear in your account.

The saving is the shard cost

saving = shard count x shard-hour rate x 730
cost after deletion = 0

Retiring or shrinking the stream

1. List consumers: aws kinesis list-stream-consumers --stream-arn <stream-arn>, and check Lambda event source mappings and KCL applications.
2. If traffic may return in bursts, switch to on-demand instead: aws kinesis update-stream-mode --stream-arn <stream-arn> --stream-mode-details StreamMode=ON_DEMAND (allowed twice within 24 hours per stream).
3. Otherwise delete it: aws kinesis delete-stream --stream-name clickstream --enforce-consumer-deletion