Amazon Web Services (AWS): Cloud & AI Platform | hokai.io
AWS holds 31% cloud market share with $107B in 2024 revenue. Offers Bedrock AI, SageMaker, 200+ services, and 143 compliance certifications. Free tier available.
AWS provides cloud infrastructure, compute, storage, and AI services used by millions globally. Pay-as-you-go pricing with free tier for 12 months.
Pricing
Pay-as-you-go with no minimum commitment. New accounts get $200 in free credits for 6 months (post-July 2025). Always-free tier includes Lambda (1M requests/month), DynamoDB (25 GB), SNS, and SQS. EC2 Spot Instances offer up to 90% savings vs. On-Demand. Reserved Instances save up to 72% for 1- or 3-year commitments. Bedrock AI inference priced per token by model. SageMaker compute priced per instance-hour.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Web Services (AWS) and what does it do?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's cloud computing division, publicly launched in March 2006. It is the world's largest cloud platform, holding approximately 31% of the global cloud market and generating $107 billion in revenue in 2024. AWS offers over 200 fully managed services covering compute (EC2), storage (S3), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), AI (Bedrock, SageMaker), serverless computing (Lambda), and more. It operates across 33 geographic regions with 100+ availability zones worldwide.
How much does AWS cost?
AWS uses pay-as-you-go pricing with no minimum commitment for on-demand services. New customers (accounts opened after July 2025) receive $200 in free credits over 6 months. Always-free tiers exist for Lambda (1 million requests per month), DynamoDB (25 GB), and SNS/SQS at specified limits. Reserved Instances save up to 72% for 1- or 3-year commitments. Spot Instances offer up to 90% savings for interruptible workloads. Egress data transfer costs $0.09 per GB, which is a common source of unexpected spend. Support plans start at $29/month (Developer) or $100/month (Business) for SLA guarantees.
What are the main AI features of AWS?
AWS's main AI features include Amazon Bedrock, which provides managed API access to foundation models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, and Amazon's Nova family without managing model infrastructure. Amazon SageMaker AI is the platform for training, fine-tuning, and deploying custom ML models at scale, with Hyperpod for distributed training. Amazon Q is AWS's generative AI assistant embedded across services to help developers write code, query data, and automate IT operations. AWS also offers specialized AI services including Rekognition (vision), Transcribe (speech-to-text), Comprehend (NLP), and Kendra (enterprise search).
Is AWS free to use?
AWS has always-free tiers for several services that never expire, including Lambda (1 million requests per month), DynamoDB (25 GB storage), SNS (1 million publishes per month), and SQS (1 million requests per month). New accounts opened after July 15, 2025 receive $200 in free credits over a 6-month period. The previous 12-month free trial for EC2 and S3 applies only to accounts opened before that date. Most production workloads incur costs once free tier limits are exceeded.
How does AWS compare to Azure and Google Cloud?
AWS leads the cloud market with approximately 31% share versus Azure at approximately 24% and Google Cloud at approximately 12%. AWS has the broadest service catalog (200+ services) and strongest compliance coverage (143 certifications). Azure is the better choice for enterprises deeply invested in Microsoft products like Office 365 and Active Directory. Google Cloud leads on pricing competitiveness (typically 20-30% cheaper on compute) and is stronger for data analytics workloads using BigQuery. In 2025, 89% of enterprises used multi-cloud setups, often with AWS as the primary provider.
Who is AWS best for?
AWS is best for backend and DevOps teams building and scaling web applications, ML engineers fine-tuning and deploying foundation models via Bedrock or SageMaker, and regulated enterprise teams in finance, healthcare, or government that need the deepest compliance coverage. It is less suitable for solo developers or early-stage startups who want simple, predictable billing, or teams that prioritize UI simplicity over feature depth, who would be better served by DigitalOcean or Render.
Does AWS have an API?
AWS is fundamentally API-first. Every AWS service is accessible via REST APIs, the AWS CLI, and official SDKs for Python (boto3), JavaScript, Java, Go, Ruby, PHP, and .NET. Amazon Bedrock exposes foundation models via a unified API with consistent request/response formats across providers. SageMaker offers inference endpoints deployable via API. AWS Marketplace integrations allow third-party software to interact with AWS APIs natively. AWS integrates with over 100 third-party tools including Terraform, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Splunk, and Salesforce.