AWS Support plans compared
AWS Enterprise Support vs a 24/7 SRE Team
AWS Enterprise Support answers for AWS services. A 24/7 SRE rotation operates your own platform on top of them. Here is what each one covers, what it costs and how they work together, using AWS’s own published pricing and scope.
What does AWS Enterprise Support cover?
AWS Enterprise Support gives 24/7 technical support by phone, web, chat and email for AWS services, a designated Technical Account Manager, and consultative reviews based on your applications. By AWS’s own description, AWS Support does not include custom code development, software debugging or system administration tasks. Help with third-party software is limited.
- Covered: questions and cases about AWS services, with response targets by case severity
- Covered on Enterprise Support and above: a designated Technical Account Manager
- Limited: common operating systems and application stack components, beyond installation, configuration and basic troubleshooting on a best-effort basis
- Not included: custom code development, software debugging and system administration tasks
- Unified Operations: AWS states it does not include hands-on keyboard support that provides direct operational management
How much does AWS Enterprise Support cost?
AWS Enterprise Support costs the greater of $5,000 a month or a tiered share of your monthly AWS charges: 10 percent up to $150K, then 7, 5 and 3 percent. Business Support+ starts at $29 a month per account, and Unified Operations at $50,000 a month. Prices are AWS’s own, checked 13 November 2026.
| AWS Support plan | Monthly minimum | Share of monthly AWS charges |
|---|---|---|
| Business Support+ | $29 per account | 9% up to $10K; 7% from $10K to $80K; 5% from $80K to $250K; 3% over $250K |
| Enterprise Support | $5,000 | 10% up to $150K; 7% from $150K to $500K; 5% from $500K to $1M; 3% over $1M |
| Unified Operations | $50,000 | 10% up to $1M; 6% from $1M to $5M; 5% over $5M |
Source: aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing. Unified Operations requires a 90-day minimum commitment. AWS Incident Detection and Response is an add-on for Enterprise Support and included in Unified Operations.
What response times does AWS Support promise?
AWS Enterprise Support targets a response in under 15 minutes for a business-critical system down, under 1 hour for a production system down and under 4 hours for a production system impaired. Business Support+ targets under 30 minutes for the most severe case. AWS describes these as reasonable efforts to respond.
| Case severity (AWS) | Business Support+ | Enterprise Support | Unified Operations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business or mission-critical system down | Under 30 min | Under 15 min | Under 5 min |
| Production system down | Under 1 hour | Under 1 hour | Under 1 hour |
| Production system impaired | Under 4 hours | Under 4 hours | Under 4 hours |
| System impaired | Under 12 hours | Under 12 hours | Under 12 hours |
| General guidance | Under 24 hours | Under 24 hours | Under 24 hours |
Source: aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/plans. AWS states it will make every reasonable effort to respond to your initial request within these timeframes. On Unified Operations the 5-minute response comes from an Incident Management Engineer.
AWS Enterprise Support vs a 24/7 SRE team: what is the difference?
AWS Enterprise Support helps you with AWS services: its engineers answer your cases and only AWS can look inside its own services. A 24/7 SRE team operates your platform on top of them: it watches your alerts, changes your clusters and pipelines, restores service and writes the root cause analysis. Most production teams need both jobs done.
| AWS Enterprise Support | Valletta 24/7 DevOps support | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | AWS services and your use of them; limited help with common third-party components | Your platform: clusters, pipelines, infrastructure code, monitoring and incidents, on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud |
| Who responds | AWS support engineers; a designated Technical Account Manager | A named engineer from the rotation who publicly takes ownership of the incident |
| Fastest response target | Under 15 minutes for a business-critical system down | 15 minutes for P1, updates every hour, 4-hour restoration target |
| Hands-on work on your systems | Custom code development, software debugging and system administration are not included | Included, with tiered notice, a named verifier and a rollback point on every change |
| Root cause analysis | Not stated in AWS’s plan comparison | Mandatory on every critical incident, within 3 working days |
| Visibility inside AWS services | Yes: AWS operates the services | No: AWS Support remains your route into AWS internals |
| Pricing basis | Greater of $5,000 a month or a tiered share of monthly AWS charges | Billed from $45 per hour; a fixed proposal after a call |
Do you need AWS Enterprise Support, a 24/7 SRE team, or both?
Choose by the problem. If your risk is a fault inside an AWS service, an AWS Support plan is the only route to AWS’s engineers. If your risk is your own platform failing at night, with nobody to diagnose it, you need a rotation that operates it. Many AWS customers keep a support plan and add 24/7 operations.
AWS Support plan
Service limits, a regional issue, behaviour of a managed service, architecture guidance from AWS.
24/7 SRE rotation
A failed deploy, a saturated cluster, an expired certificate, an alert nobody understands, and the fix.
Both together
The rotation handles the incident and can open a case through your AWS plan when the cause sits inside an AWS service.
Frequently asked questions
AWS lists Enterprise Support from $5,000 a month, or 10 percent of monthly AWS charges up to $150K, 7 percent from $150K to $500K, 5 percent from $500K to $1M and 3 percent above $1M, whichever is greater. We checked these figures on AWS’s pricing page on 13 November 2026.
AWS Support answers questions about AWS services. AWS states that support does not include custom code development, software debugging or system administration tasks, and third-party software help is limited to common components on a best-effort basis beyond basic troubleshooting. Fixing your own application and platform stays with your team or an operator you choose.
Yes. AWS assigns Technical Account Managers on the Enterprise Support plan and above, and on Unified Operations together with Domain Specialist Engineers. A TAM is your guide to AWS services and best practice. AWS states that Unified Operations does not include hands-on keyboard support for direct operational management.
No, and we do not try to. Only AWS can investigate inside its own services, so an AWS Support plan remains your route to AWS engineers. Our 24/7 rotation operates your platform on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. The two cover different jobs, and teams commonly run a support plan together with an operations rotation.
AWS targets an initial response in under 15 minutes for a business-critical system down, under 1 hour for a production system down and under 4 hours for a production system impaired. AWS describes these as reasonable efforts. Our P1 target is a named engineer within 15 minutes, with hourly updates and a 4-hour restoration target.
That depends on your AWS spend and how often you need AWS engineers. Business Support+ starts at $29 a month per account and targets under 30 minutes for a business-critical system down. Enterprise Support adds a designated TAM and a 15-minute target. We can review the choice with you on a call.
Compare it against your own numbers
Send us your stack and current support setup. We come back with a side-by-side cost comparison and a fixed proposal.
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