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Optimize storage costs with Amazon CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering - Amazon CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering access tiersActions that constitute accessEnabling CloudWatch Logs Intelligent TieringMonitoring storage per tierPricing for CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering

Optimize storage costs with Amazon CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering automatically classifies your log data across three access tiers based on access patterns: Standard, Infrequent Access, and Archive Instant Access. With Intelligent Tiering, you can retain high-volume, long-retention logs at lower-cost tiers without any operational overhead. Instead of filtering logs or offloading them to separate storage solutions, you can keep them natively in CloudWatch Logs and benefit from the same query experience regardless of which tier your data resides in.

CloudWatch Logs monitors access patterns and automatically reclassifies data not accessed for 30 days to the Infrequent Access tier, and data not accessed for 90 days to the Archive Instant Access tier. When you access older data, CloudWatch Logs automatically promotes it back to the Standard tier for 30 days. By consolidating all your logs in CloudWatch Logs, you get full visibility in one tool—eliminating the operational overhead of managing multiple storage solutions and reducing your mean time to resolution (MTTR) by querying, analyzing, and alerting on all your logs in a single place.

To start optimizing storage costs, enable Intelligent Tiering at the account level within a Region by using the CloudWatch console or by calling PutStorageTierPolicy. After you enable Intelligent Tiering, it applies to all log groups in your account within that Region.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering is available in all AWS commercial regions except the Middle East (Bahrain) and Middle East (UAE) Regions.

CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering access tiers

Your query experience remains the same regardless of which access tier your log data resides in.

Standard (default)

This is the default tier. All newly ingested log data starts in the Standard tier. Log data remains in this tier as long as it is being accessed. The Standard tier provides low latency and high-throughput performance for queries, exports, live tail, and log retrieval.

Infrequent Access

If log data is not accessed for 30 consecutive days, it moves to the Infrequent Access tier. The Infrequent Access tier provides the same query latency and throughput as the Standard tier, at a lower storage cost.

Archive Instant Access

If log data is not accessed for 90 consecutive days, it moves to the Archive Instant Access tier. The Archive Instant Access tier provides the same millisecond query latency as other tiers, at the lowest storage cost.

Actions that constitute access

The following access patterns automatically promote log data from the Infrequent Access tier or Archive Instant Access tier back to the Standard tier. When any of these operations read log events in a lower-cost tier, those log events move back to the Standard tier for 30 days. The timer resets on each subsequent access.

  • Egress with query – Querying log data with StartQuery (CloudWatch Logs Insights)

  • Filtering and retrieving log events – Using FilterLogEvents or GetLogEvents to read log events

  • Export – Exporting log data to Amazon S3 with CreateExportTask

Enabling CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering

Required permissions

To manage the storage tier for your account, you need the following IAM permissions:

  • logs:PutStorageTierPolicy – Required to set or change the storage tier for your account.

  • logs:GetStorageTierPolicy – Required to retrieve the storage tier that is currently configured. Also required to enable Intelligent Tiering from the console.

Users with the CloudWatchLogsFullAccess managed policy already have both permissions. Users with the CloudWatchLogsReadOnlyAccess managed policy have the logs:GetStorageTierPolicy permission.

The following example shows a policy statement that grants both permissions:

{
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
        "logs:PutStorageTierPolicy",
        "logs:GetStorageTierPolicy"
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
}

Enable using the console

To enable Intelligent Tiering using the CloudWatch console:

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Settings.

  3. On the Settings page, choose the Logs tab.

  4. In the Intelligent Tiering section, choose Enable.

Enable using the AWS CLI

To enable Intelligent Tiering, use the put-storage-tier-policy command:

aws logs put-storage-tier-policy --storage-tier INTELLIGENT_TIERING

The command returns the storage tier that was set and the time it was last updated:

{
    "storageTier": "INTELLIGENT_TIERING",
    "lastUpdatedTime": 1751328000000
}

To disable Intelligent Tiering, set the storage tier back to STANDARD:

aws logs put-storage-tier-policy --storage-tier STANDARD

When you set the storage tier back to STANDARD, all log groups in your account are billed at the Standard storage rate.

Viewing your current configuration

To view the current storage tier for your account, use the get-storage-tier-policy command:

aws logs get-storage-tier-policy

The command returns the current storage tier and the time it was last updated:

{
    "storageTier": "INTELLIGENT_TIERING",
    "lastUpdatedTime": 1751328000000
}

Monitoring storage per tier

When Intelligent Tiering is enabled, CloudWatch Logs publishes a vended metric that shows the amount of data stored in each tier for each log group:

  • Namespace: AWS/Logs

  • Metric name: StoredBytes

  • Dimensions: LogGroupName, StorageType (values: Standard, Infrequent_Access, Archival_Instant_Access)

You can use this metric to create CloudWatch dashboards that show per-tier storage breakdown, set alarms on tier sizes, or track cost optimization over time.

Note

This metric is published once per day and might not reflect tier transitions in real time.

Pricing for CloudWatch Logs Intelligent Tiering

With Intelligent Tiering, you pay different storage rates based on the tier where your data resides. There is no additional charge for enabling Intelligent Tiering, and no charge for tier transitions. You pay only for the storage consumed in each tier.

For more information about pricing, see Amazon CloudWatch pricing.