Imagine you’ve just launched your startup’s new app, built entirely on AWS. Your team is excited — everything’s running smoothly, users are signing up, and you’re scaling quickly. But there’s one thing you didn’t quite expect: the costs associated with moving your data around. At first glance, you might think AWS is a magical cloud platform where everything is free, but as you dive deeper into the services, you realize something: data transfer fees. And these costs can add up fast. Let me walk you through a story that explains exactly how AWS data transfer costs work, and what you can do to manage them like a pro. What Are AWS Data Transfer Costs? When you think about moving data, it’s easy to assume it’s just a matter of uploading or downloading files. But in the cloud, there are different kinds of data transfers that all come with their own pricing structures. AWS data transfer costs are the fees you pay when moving data across boundaries — whether that’s within the cloud, betwe...