Today I want to share with you something that maybe can help your AWS bill go a little bit down 📉 — saving money on Route 53!
I use Route 53 a lot. It is a great DNS service from AWS — fast, reliable, global. But sometimes we use more than what we need, and that means more money 💰.
So here I give you 5 tips to pay less with Route 53. Simple and straight. Let’s go! 🚀
💡 This is a text version of one of my videos on Youtube
🧼 Delete Hosted Zones You Don’t Need
Each hosted zone in Route 53 costs $0.50 per month. Maybe it looks cheap, but if you have many zones that are not in use anymore… it adds up.
So first thing: clean your zones. Go to the console, check if there are old projects or test domains you don’t use. If yes, delete them! 👋
Less zones = less cost.
📦 Consolidate Hosted Zones
If you have similar domains or subdomains like:
- mywebsite.com
- api.mywebsite.com
- shop.mywebsite.com
- qa.mywebsite.com
You maybe don’t need separate hosted zones. You can put all in one and just manage with records.
More consolidation, less zones, less $$$.
⏱ Increase TTL (Time To Live)
Every DNS record has a TTL. It tells how long the record is cached. A small TTL (like 60 seconds) means more DNS queries = more cost.
So, if your record is not changing a lot, increase the TTL. Like 1 day or more. That way, less queries go to Route 53, and that saves money 💸.
🗑 Delete Records You Don’t Use
Like with zones, check your DNS records. Do you still need that old test.example.com? Or that old mail server from a service you don’t use?
If not — delete it. Keep it clean.
Also, when pointing to AWS resources (like S3, CloudFront, etc), use Alias records. Alias records don’t charge you for queries — they are free! ✅
👀 Review Health Checks and Routing Policies
Health checks in Route 53 are useful but not free. One health check costs between $0.50 and $2 per month.
If you don’t really need them, maybe your service has monitoring already — turn them off.
Same with routing policies: geolocation, latency-based, failover, and weighted routing, these are more expensive than simple routing.
So if you can use Simple Routing, go for it. It’s cheaper and maybe you don’t need the extra features.
Bonus Tip: 📊 Check Your Bill and Usage
Every month, take 5 minutes to check your AWS bill and Route 53 usage.
Go to the Billing Dashboard, and filter by service. See if there are any surprises or charges you didn’t expect. This helps a lot.
Also, look at Cost Explorer. Maybe you see a spike in DNS queries — and then you know where to optimize.
Thanks for reading! If you have other tips, I’d love to hear them 😄
Let’s save that AWS money together! 🤑
