2 issues ... 1) db.m3.Large, db.m4.large, and db.m5.large are all around $130/month, no where near a 20% difference between any one of them.. so to not enough

2 issues ... 1) db.m3.Large, db.m4.large, and db.m5.large are all around $130/month, no where near a 20% difference between any one of them.. so to not enough information to find this supposed 78% premium 2) AWS is totally for the cost concerned.... But you can't just lift and shift... That's exactly how NOT to save money. I run many projects out of AWS for less than $5/month ... Which is the usual expected cost for a web server. If you can leverage something like Dynamo DB for your DB you can get cheaper databases However, everything in AWS is a pricing game. API gateway is cheap until you get to 5 million requests pet month, then you should look at ELB proxy... Unless you really need API gateway's additional features... Though HTTP proxy just came out and I think that is a good replacement for many people for API gateway which reduce costs 70% and makes it a good low cost front end listener up to 15 million requests or so before you may want to consider a load balancer instead (of course, assuming the features line up with needs)