Understand contact billing

With AWS Ground Station, you pay only for the antenna time you use. AWS Ground Station meters contact usage on a per-minute basis. For each contact, the service calculates the contact duration from start to end time and rounds up to the nearest minute. This metered duration determines your charges for that contact.

Your rate depends on two main factors:

Bandwidth definitions

AWS Ground Station categorizes contacts into two bandwidth tiers based on the instantaneous bandwidth:

Scheduling modes

AWS Ground Station offers two scheduling modes:

For specific pricing information for your account or to learn more about the Reserved scheduling mode, contact your AWS representative.

CancelContact

Use of the CancelContact API varies based on the contact state when you call it:

When you cancel a contact, billing depends on your scheduling mode and when you cancel. For more information, reach out to your AWS representative.

When you stop a contact, you are billed for the portion of the contact that executed, and the remaining time that is not covered by duplicate contacts. A duplicate contact in this context has been:

The following scenarios demonstrate how this metering works in practice.

Scenario 1: Single contact

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30.

Billing breakdown:

You're billed for 150 minutes. This is the baseline scenario where a contact runs to its scheduled completion without any stops or cancellations.

Scenario 2: Single stopped contact

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your contact.

Billing breakdown:

You're billed for the full 150 minutes because you stopped the contact but didn't schedule any duplicate contacts to cover the remaining time (15:00-16:30). When you stop a contact without scheduling duplicates, you remain responsible for the entire originally scheduled duration.

Scenario 3: Single duplicate

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. After calling CancelContact, you schedule another contact on the same Ground Station starting at 15:10 for 150 minutes.

Billing breakdown:

The second contact is a duplicate because you scheduled it after stopping the first contact. The duplicate covers the remaining time from 15:10 to 16:30, so you are only billed for the time the first contact actually ran plus the 10-minute gap between stopping and restarting.

Scenario 4: Short duplicate

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. After calling CancelContact, you schedule a 30-minute contact on the same Ground Station starting at 15:10.

Billing breakdown:

The duplicate contact only covers 30 minutes (15:10-15:40) of the 90 minutes remaining after you stopped the first contact. You're billed for both the 10-minute gap before the duplicate starts and the 50 minutes of uncovered time after the duplicate ends (15:40-16:30).

Scenario 5: Multiple duplicates

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. After calling CancelContact, you schedule a 30-minute contact on the same Ground Station starting at 15:10. Later, at 15:30, you schedule another contact starting at 16:00 for 120 minutes.

Billing breakdown:

Both the second and third contacts count as duplicates because you scheduled them after stopping the first contact. However, you are still billed for the gaps between contacts: 10 minutes between the first stop (15:00) and second start (15:10), and 20 minutes between the second end (15:40) and third start (16:00).

Scenario 6: Multiple stops

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. After calling CancelContact, you schedule an 80-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 that begins at 15:10 and ends at 16:30. At 15:30, you call the CancelContact API again, stopping your duplicate contact.

Billing breakdown:

The second contact is billed for its full 80-minute duration because you stopped it at 15:30, leaving 60 minutes of originally scheduled time (15:30-16:30) unfilled. Unless you schedule another duplicate contact to cover the remaining time, you are responsible for the entire duration of any stopped contact.

Scenario 7: Multi-antenna ground station with no duplicate

At 13:00, you schedule two contacts on Ground Station Anytown 1. The first is a 150-minute contact beginning at 14:00 and ending at 16:30. The second is a 90-minute contact beginning at 15:00 and ending at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. Ground Station Anytown 1 is a multi-antenna ground station, which allows both contacts to run simultaneously.

Billing breakdown:

Although the second contact overlaps with the stopped portion of the first contact, it doesn't count as a duplicate. The second contact fails to meet the first criterion for duplicates: it was scheduled at 13:00, before you stopped the first contact at 15:00. Because it's not a duplicate, you are billed for the full original duration of the first contact, regardless of when you stopped it.

Scenario 8: Multi-antenna ground station with duplicate contacts

You schedule a 150-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 to begin at 14:00 and end at 16:30. At 15:00, you call the CancelContact API to stop your first contact. After calling CancelContact, you schedule a 30-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 beginning at 15:10 and ending at 15:40. Later, you schedule another 90-minute contact on Ground Station Anytown 1 starting at 15:30 and ending at 17:00. Ground Station Anytown 1 is a multi-antenna ground station, which allows both duplicate contacts to run simultaneously with overlapping times.

Billing breakdown:

Both the second and third contacts count as duplicates because you scheduled them after stopping the first contact. The 10-minute gap between stopping the first contact (15:00) and starting the second contact (15:10) represents downtime that you are billed for against the original contact.