Flexmatch pricing if there is only a few players who can't be matched and they stay in the queue for long time?

FlexMatch pricing is based on two components: Player Packages and Matchmaking Hours.

For Player Packages, you are charged $20 per million packages ($0.00002 per package). A Player Package is counted each time you submit a player's request to play a game session, including the player attributes used for matchmaking. If a player clicks "find match" once and waits in the queue, that counts as 1 Player Package. There is no re-sending that creates additional packages while the player waits.

For Matchmaking Hours, you are charged $1 per matchmaking hour, rounded up to the nearest microsecond. Matchmaking Hours are calculated based on the actual time FlexMatch spends executing matchmaking evaluations, not how long players wait in the queue.

In your examples:

Example 1: If one person is waiting in the queue for 12 hours, this doesn't mean you're charged for 12 Matchmaking Hours. You're only charged for the actual time FlexMatch spends trying to match this player. FlexMatch will periodically attempt to find a match for this player, but it's not continuously processing for the entire 12 hours.

Example 2: Similarly, 10 people waiting for 12 hours doesn't translate to 120 Matchmaking Hours. The system will periodically evaluate potential matches for these players, but charges are based on the actual processing time, not queue waiting time.

The complexity of your ruleset, player arrival rate, and distribution of player attributes are factors that drive Matchmaking Hours. Generally, FlexMatch customers submitting 1 million Player Packages per month typically don't exceed 720 Matchmaking Hours per month.

Also worth noting is that FlexMatch offers a free tier that includes 50,000 Player Packages and 5 Matchmaking Hours per month, which could cover small-scale usage scenarios.
Sources
Dedicated Game Server Hosting - Amazon GameLift FAQs - Amazon Web Services
Amazon GameLift - FAQ - Amazon Web Services
Dedicated Game Server Hosting - Amazon GameLift Pricing - Amazon Web Services

Thanks!

Let's focus on the Example 1 scenario from here on. Let's say the matchmaking rules are:

• match needs 2 players
• latency has to be below 200 ms
• no other rules.

Can you give me a range of estimates of how many matchmaking hours it could be, if matchmaker is periodically processing that and the person is in queue for 1 hour without finding anyone. What kind of time range are we talking about here, is it more like 0.1 hour or 0.001 hour?

Thanks!