Amazon SNS
Amazon SNS is a managed publish-and-subscribe service for sending messages between applications and to people.
What Amazon SNS is
Amazon SNS is a managed publish-and-subscribe service for sending messages between applications and to people. It delivers notifications to application endpoints and can reach people by SMS, mobile push, or email. Standard topics handle nearly unlimited messages per second with best-effort ordering and deduplication; FIFO topics preserve order and prevent duplicate delivery within five minutes, with a limit of 3,000 messages per second or 10 MB per second per topic. Publishers can send batches of 1 to 10 messages, and subscribers can filter which notifications they receive. SNS connects with AWS event sources and services such as SQS, Data Firehose, Lambda, and HTTPS endpoints. It retries delivery and supports dead-letter queues. Each message can be up to 256 KB; the Extended Client Library can place payloads up to 2 GB in S3 and send an object reference. SNS offers a free plan with 1 million requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications, and 1,000 email notifications monthly. Paid usage is billed monthly; listed rates include $0.50 per month for API requests, $0.06 for HTTP deliveries, and $2.00 for email deliveries.
Good
- Free plan includes monthly request and delivery allowances.
- FIFO topics preserve message order.
- Filter policies let subscribers select notifications.
- Dead-letter queues handle undelivered messages.
- PrivateLink endpoints avoid public internet traversal.
Watch out
- Standard topics provide best-effort ordering.
- Standard message limit is 256 KB.
- Charges vary by topic, requests, deliveries, and payload data.
Who it suits
SNS suits teams building cloud applications that need to route notifications to services or people. It serves a range of organizations, including startups, enterprises, non-profits, and governments.
Verdict
Amazon SNS covers application messaging and notifications to people, with both standard and FIFO topic options. Its free allowance is defined, while paid charges depend on usage and delivery type.
Plans and prices
From Amazon SNS's own pricing page, checked 20 Sep 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Free | 1 million requests · 100,000 HTTP notifications · 1,000 email notifications · Free usage is applied each month |
| API requests | $0.50 a month | Pay-as-you-go API request pricing · Charged at the end of the month for usage |
| HTTP deliveries | $0.06 a month | HTTP notification delivery pricing · Delivery pricing varies by endpoint type |
| Email deliveries | $2 a month | Email notification delivery pricing · Delivery pricing varies by endpoint type |
| Pay-as-you-go | — | No upfront fees · No required minimum commitments · No long-term contracts · Charges depend on topic type, requests, deliveries, and payload data · At the end of the month for usage |
The facts
Each one read from Amazon SNS's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Compliance
- Amazon SNS is listed as in scope for AWS SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports; AWS says customers remain responsible for their applicable compliance obligations.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Delivery
- SNS delivers notifications to application endpoints and to people through SMS, mobile push, and email.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Durability
- SNS stores published messages across geographically separated servers and data centers, retries delivery, and supports dead-letter queues for undelivered messages.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Encryption
- Encrypted topics use server-side 256-bit AES-GCM encryption with a key issued by AWS Key Management Service.checked 29 Sep 2026
- FIFO topics
- FIFO topics preserve message order, prevent duplicate delivery within a five-minute interval, and support up to 3,000 messages per second or 10 MB per second per topic.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Filtering and batching
- Publishers can batch 1 to 10 messages per API request, and subscribers can use filter policies to receive selected notifications.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Integrations
- SNS has native integrations with AWS event sources and destinations, and supports endpoints including Amazon SQS, Amazon Data Firehose, AWS Lambda, and HTTPS.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Message size
- Each message can contain up to 256 KB; the SNS Extended Client Library can store payloads up to 2 GB in Amazon S3 and publish an object reference.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Mobile push
- SNS mobile push supports iOS, Android, Fire, Windows, and Baidu devices through providers including APNs, Firebase Cloud Messaging, and Amazon Device Messaging.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Private networking
- SNS supports AWS PrivateLink VPC endpoints to publish to topics without traversing the public internet.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Purpose
- Amazon SNS is a fully managed Pub/Sub service for application-to-application and application-to-person messaging.checked 29 Sep 2026
- SMS reach
- SNS supports SMS messaging to over 200 countries and offers redundancy across multiple SMS providers.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Standard topics
- Standard topics support nearly unlimited messages per second, best-effort ordering and deduplication, and up to 12.5 million subscriptions per topic.checked 29 Sep 2026
- Who it serves
- AWS says its customers include startups, enterprises, non-profits, and governments.checked 29 Sep 2026
Money
- Free plan
- Yeschecked 20 Sep 2026
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