Amazon DynamoDB Costs: Capacity Modes, PITR and DAX
A DynamoDB table has no off switch. What you can change is how its reads and writes are paid for and what sits around it.
Two ways to pay for throughput
DynamoDB offers two capacity modes. On-demand is pay-per-request for reads and writes and is AWS’s default and recommended option. Provisioned mode charges for the hourly read and write capacity you configure, whether or not it is consumed. On top of throughput, AWS’s pricing page lists storage, on-demand backups and point-in-time recovery sized by the table, stream reads, replicated writes for global tables, exports and imports, and DAX.
There is no stop or pause for a table. A schedule has nothing to act on, which is why ZopNight does not offer one for DynamoDB.
The choices that move a table’s cost
- Mode fit. A table with steady, predictable traffic on on-demand may cost less provisioned; a spiky one may be the reverse.
- Recovery features outside production. PITR on a scratch or test table buys protection nobody needs.
- Provisioned without auto scaling. Fixed capacity set for a peak that happens once a week.
- Read pressure. A table read far more than written may be better served by a cache.
What ZopNight checks per table
- DynamoDB On-Demand Billing with Steady Traffic fires on an on-demand table whose combined consumed capacity is steady, and prices the gap between the on-demand cost and an equivalent provisioned setting.
- DynamoDB PITR Enabled on Non-Production Table prices the PITR backup storage that would be reclaimed.
- DynamoDB Auto Scaling Disabled flags provisioned tables with fixed capacity.
- DynamoDB Read-Heavy Table, Consider DAX flags tables where reads dominate.
Tables appear in the same inventory as your compute, filtered by account and region, with cost as rack rate or billed cost. Recommendations run on a read-only connection; nothing about a table’s configuration is changed by ZopNight.
Related reading
Details for the table and cache resources: DynamoDB fact sheet and DAX fact sheet. The general pattern for pay-per-use services is on serverless cost management.
Questions we get a lot.
Can I schedule a DynamoDB table to stop overnight?
No. DynamoDB has no stop operation. On-demand tables already charge per request, and provisioned tables charge for configured capacity, so the levers are mode, capacity and features.
Does ZopNight change my table's capacity mode?
No. The capacity-mode finding is a recommendation with its saving priced; you make the change.