Auth cost before you scale MAUs
Amazon Cognito Pricing Calculator
Model tiered MAU pricing, federation, and M2M tokens — see auth cost as a line item in your unit economics.
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Rates reviewed
Read the full breakdown — Companion pricing guide covers billing dimensions, traps, and a 30-day cleanup plan.
User pool pricing tier
us-east-1list rates, pricing as of 2026-10-20. Identity Pools and Sync excluded. Multi-Region replication add-on ($0.0045/MAU Essentials, $0.006/MAU Plus) applies to every MAU, with no free tier assumed; replicated M2M token rates are not modeled. Source: AWS public pricing.
Monthly active users & tokens
$0.00225 per successful token response.
US SMS at $0.01195/message incl. carrier fee.
Estimated Cognito Cost
MAU + M2M breakdown
Total Monthly Cost
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FactualMinds designs multi-tenant Cognito architectures, SAML federation, and Verified Permissions authorization for SaaS platforms.
Explore App Development →Who This Tool Is For
SaaS founders, CTOs, and backend teams sizing customer authentication before scaling MAUs or adding enterprise SSO.
Why We Built This Tool
Cognito moved to tiered pricing in late 2024 — Lite, Essentials, and Plus bill differently per MAU, and M2M token requests are a separate meter with no free tier.
What Problem It Solves
- Tier mismatch. Essentials at 50K MAUs ≈ $600/month after free tier; Plus at the same scale ≈ $1,000.
- Federation vs direct. SAML/OIDC MAUs have a separate 50-MAU free tier but bill $0.015/MAU above it.
- M2M blind spot. Service-to-service OAuth token requests bill $0.00225 each — no MAU free tier applies.
Compare workforce vs customer auth in IAM Identity Center vs Cognito or explore application development.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do these Cognito prices come from?
AWS published us-east-1 list prices (Amazon Cognito pricing), pricing as of 2026-10-20.
What is a monthly active user (MAU)?
Any user who triggers an identity operation in the calendar month — sign-in, sign-up, token refresh, or attribute update. Inactive users in that month are not charged.
What is the Cognito free tier?
Essentials and Lite include 10,000 free direct/social MAUs per month. Federated SAML/OIDC MAUs get 50 free per month. Plus tier has no MAU free tier.
How is M2M authorization priced?
Machine-to-machine flows bill per successful token response at $0.00225 in us-east-1. There is no free tier for M2M token requests.
What does multi-Region replication cost?
It is an add-on for Essentials and Plus user pools: $0.0045 per MAU on Essentials and $0.006 per MAU on Plus in us-east-1, with each user counted once across the primary and secondary Regions. It requires a multi-Region KMS customer managed key. For example, 500,000 Essentials MAUs add $2,250/month.
Does SMS MFA cost extra?
Yes. Cognito sends SMS via SNS — this calculator uses an approximate US SMS rate. International and carrier fees vary.
When should I upgrade from Lite to Essentials?
Upgrade when you need passwordless login, managed login visual editor, or email MFA — features not available on Lite. Essentials is the default tier for new user pools.
