Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
Amazon EFS provides a fully managed file system specifically for EC2 instances, handling the underlying infrastructure so you don’t have to manage storage nodes. It supports shared access across multiple instances, making it suitable for applications that need consistent, concurrent file access without complex configuration or maintenance tasks.
This setup works well for teams scaling EC2 workloads who want to avoid managing storage capacity manually. The main trade-off is the pricing structure: while a free trial exists, standard usage starts at $0.008 per GB/month, which can accumulate quickly for large datasets compared to block storage options.
- Free tier Yes
- Starting price from $0.008 per GB/month
- Regions 15 · 6 continents
- SLA uptime 99.99%
- Compliance 13 certifications
- Provider health A
Decision score
Computed from catalog breadth, pricing, provider reliability (uptime & SLA), community signal, and ecosystem (compliance & regions). Weighted equally.
Trust & reach via AWS
- C5
- CSA STAR
- FedRAMP
- GDPR
- HIPAA
- ISO 27001
- ISO 27017
- ISO 27018
- ISO 9001
- PCI DSS
- SOC 1 Type II
- SOC 2 Type II
- compute99.99%
- database99.99%
- networking99.99%
- storage99.99%
15 regions across 6 continents
- Africa
- Asia
- Europe
- North America
- Oceania
- South America
Pricing tiers 11
| Tier / Plan | Price | Unit | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| USE1-ArchiveTimedStorage-ByteHrs | $0.008 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-IADataAccess-Bytes | $0.0100 | per GB | us-east-1 |
| USE1-IATimedStorage-Z-ByteHrs | $0.0133 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-IATimedStorage-ET-ByteHrs | $0.0160 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-IATimedStorage-ByteHrs | $0.0250 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-IATimedStorage-SmallFiles | $0.0250 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-ArchiveDataAccess-Bytes | $0.0300 | per GB | us-east-1 |
| USE1-ETDataAccess-Bytes | $0.0600 | per GB | us-east-1 |
| USE1-TimedStorage-Z-ByteHrs | $0.1600 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-TimedStorage-ByteHrs | $0.3000 | per GB/month | us-east-1 |
| USE1-ProvisionedTP-MiBpsHrs | $6.00 | MiBps-Mo | us-east-1 |
Prices in USD. Micro-prices are quoted per 1M units; "< $0.000001" marks rates below our stored precision. Subject to change — check the provider's official page.
Alternatives on other providers
Equivalent services on other clouds:
- DigitalOcean Network File Storage no price Compare
- Google Cloud Platform Filestore no price Compare
- Microsoft Azure Azure Files no price Compare