Pete Bayne

Cognito now lets you secure access to APIs with AWS Verified Permission. But before using it, make sure you understand the pricing for Verified Permissions. It's one of the most expensive AWS services you'll find! Considering that you should call Verified Permissions to authenticate and authorize EVERY user request, the $150/million authorization requests price is 150x the cost of API Gateway HTTP APIs ($1/million requests). That's right. 150$/million... it's not a typo. It's a very powerful service and one that I would love to use. However, its current pricing makes it prohibitive except for the most business-critical, most predictable, and low-throughput environments. Some have argued that you can start with it and then move away when it gets expensive. I'm normally OK with that line of thinking, and it's the same argument I'd use for choosing API Gateway over ALB. But at $150/million requests, your cost will grow very, very quickly as traffic grows. It leaves no room for manoeuvre and no margin for error. Any unexpected spikes in traffic or coding errors (e.g. loops, unnecessary auth requests) will be punished with no mercy. I will be overjoyed with this announcement in an alternate universe where Verified Permissions is reasonably priced. But in this universe, I wonder when we will hear the first horror story of a surprise AWS bill. aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wha…