Clarification on OpenSearch Serverless pricing

Question

The [pricing page](https://aws.amazon.com/opensearch-service/pricing/) states:

>  Customers will be billed for a minimum of 4 OCUs (2x indexing includes primary and standby, and 2x search that includes one replica for HA) for the first collection in an account.

And (for us-east-1) it gives the OCU pricing as *"$0.24 per OCU per hour"*.

Does this mean that the minimum cost for using OpenSearch Serverless is $700.80 per month ($0.24 x 4 x 730)?

Accepted Answer

AWS Director of Product Management for OpenSearch, Carl Meadows, just clarified this in a comment on the AWS Blog:

That is correct - during the Preview - when you spin up your first collection - 4 OCUs will begin billing - which are redundant compute to support both indexing and search requests. The good news is that these OCUs can support multiple collections and will only scale up when more compute is needed to support your various workloads. As we go forward to GA and beyond we will look at additional options to help lower the entry point and drive greater cost efficiency like pause and reduce on indexing and search when there are no requests coming in etc.

> That is correct - during the Preview - when you spin up your first collection - 4 OCUs will begin billing - which are redundant compute to support both indexing and search requests. The good news is that these OCUs can support multiple collections and will only scale up when more compute is needed to support your various workloads. As we go forward to GA and beyond we will look at additional options to help lower the entry point and drive greater cost efficiency like pause and reduce on indexing and search when there are no requests coming in etc.

Answer

The minimum cost could be better estimated using 
https://calculator.aws/#/addService/OpenSearchService

I tried the below options to get an estimate. Please input based on your needs to come up with your closest estimate. *Note: Actuals may vary from estimates*
1. Data instances - On demand -  c4.2xlarge.search `1 instance(s) x 0.587 USD hourly x (20 / 100 Utilized/Month) x 730 hours in a month = 85.7020 USD (Amazon OpenSearch Service data instance cost)`
2. Dedicated master instances - will be always at 100% utilization - c4.2xlarge.search `1 instance(s) x 0.587 USD hourly x (100 / 100 Utilized/Month) x 730 hours in a month = 428.5100 USD (Amazon OpenSearch Service dedicated master instance cost)`
3. Storage - GP3 - EBS - 100 GB - `100 GB x 0.122 USD x 1 instances = 12.20 USD EBS Storage Cost (gp3)
General Purpose SSD (gp3) - Storage monthly cost: 12.20 USD`

Clarification on OpenSearch Serverless pricing

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