AWS SQS: When a 'Cheap' Queue Runs Up a Huge Bill
SQS is cheap until it isn’t. Real example from the wild: $500k in a weekend — and Amazon reportedly asked the team not to delete everything at once in certain regions, as it could impact the service. The usual culprit isn’t message volume; it’s how often you call ReceiveMessage when the queue is empty. How SQS Billing Works You pay per request (SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, DeleteMessage, etc.), not per message. Standard queue: about $0....