In the table "Performance across the S3 Storage classess" it’s spoken that the Intelligent Tiering doesn’t have charges for retrieval, however, in the next slide, it is written that it has charges for retrieval – what’s correct?
3 Answers
Remember that the Intelligent Tiering is a mix of multiple storage classes. So it doesn’t have retrieval charges by itself but you will have charges depending on which class the object you want to retrieve is on.
Check the aws faq on storage classes for a more in depth explanation: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/#Storage_Classes
While S3 IA and Glacier would charge a retrieval fee if you used those storage classes directly, when used by S3 Intelligent Tier the object is moved back into S3 standard storage and no retrieval fee is charged. See the question Q: Is there a charge to retrieve data from S3 Intelligent-Tiering?
Francisco does have a point in that the next slide (#124 of 1289 slides in the slide deck), there is an arrow incorrectly pointing from "Retrieval fee applies" to the S3 Intelligent Tiering table section.
Also in the same section, the last but one line should read:
"Infrequent Access Tier, All Storage/Month. $0.0125 per GB" (The ‘In’ in ‘Infrequent’ is missing).
To summarize: S3-IT has no retrieval fee. Depending on which tier (Standard of Infrequent Access) the data ends up that month, there is just the storage fee. Plus there is a per object monitoring fee as mentioned in the slide.
Lastly, there is now a third tier since the slide was published:"Archive Instant Access Tier, All Storage / Month $0.004 per GB" — Data automatically moved here after 90 days in Frequent Access.
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ (reference for the pricing in the slide)