Amazon Kendra Pricing Calculator
Estimate Developer or Enterprise edition base cost plus query and storage capacity units. Kendra enters maintenance for new customers after July 30, 2026 — evaluate Quick Suite or Bedrock Knowledge Bases for net-new search.
- No signup
- Instant results
- ~2 min
Rates reviewed
Edition selection
us-east-1list rates, pricing as of 2026-07-03. Pricing MCP was permission-blocked; values use AWS public us-east-1 list prices. Developer Edition does not support additional capacity units. Source: AWS public pricing.
Who This Tool Is For
Data architects, engineering leads, and FinOps practitioners evaluating Amazon Kendra for enterprise search or knowledge management.
Why We Built This Tool
Kendra's flat edition fees ($810–$1,008/month) are just the floor — additional query capacity units billed at $35/CU/hour can exceed the base fee within hours of burst traffic.
What Problem It Solves
- Hidden capacity costs. Teams provision extra query CUs for peak periods without modeling hourly billing accumulation.
- Edition confusion. Developer Edition looks cheaper but caps at 40K documents and forbids additional connectors.
- Amazon Q vs Kendra. The right product depends on whether you need a search API or a user-facing AI assistant.
Compare with Amazon OpenSearch or explore our GenAI consulting services.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Kendra Query Capacity Unit and how does it bill?
Each additional Query Capacity Unit adds approximately 0.1 QPS of query throughput to your Enterprise Edition index. Units are billed at $35/CU/hour while provisioned — add 1 extra CU for a full month (730 hours) and you pay $25,550 on top of the $1,008 base. Capacity units are intended for burst windows, not permanent baseline expansion.
Developer Edition vs Enterprise Edition: which to choose?
Developer Edition ($810/month) is suited for proof-of-concept work — it includes 10K queries/day, 5 document sources, and up to 40K documents, but has no additional capacity options. Enterprise Edition ($1,008/month base) supports unlimited documents, more data source connectors, and additional capacity units. Production workloads should use Enterprise.
What is included in the Developer Edition base price?
The $810/month Developer Edition includes a fixed index with 10,000 queries/day capacity, 5 document data sources, 40,000 documents, and 3 GB of text storage. No additional capacity units or high availability configuration is available at this tier.
When does Amazon Q Business replace Kendra?
Amazon Q Business ($3–$20/user/month) is the right choice when you need an AI assistant with chat, document Q&A, and identity-aware access controls. Kendra is the right choice when you need a search API with custom relevance tuning, fine-grained ranking controls, and developer-integrated search experiences in your own application.
Are Kendra pricing rates the same in all AWS regions?
This calculator models us-east-1 list rates as of 2026-07-03. Rates may differ in other regions. Verify current pricing at AWS Kendra pricing before committing.
Does connector pricing add to the base edition cost?
Developer Edition includes 5 data source connectors at no extra charge. Enterprise Edition connectors are included in the base price for built-in connectors. Third-party connector licensing fees from connector vendors are separate and outside this estimate.