As of a couple years ago, DynamoDB will redistribute throughput between shards based on usage [1], so in theory this should eliminate the hot shard problem. I

As of a couple years ago, DynamoDB will redistribute throughput between shards based on usage [1], so in theory this should eliminate the hot shard problem. I haven't had a chance to test this in practice, if anybody has hands-on experience I'd love to hear it. You also finally have a way of identifying hot keys with the terribly named CloudWatch Contributor Insights for DynamoDB. [2] For exceptional use cases, you also have the option of On-Demand Capacity to pay for what you use and not worry about capacity at all. [3] [1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-partition-key-design.html#bp-partition-key-partitions-adaptive https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg... [2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/contributorinsights.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg... [3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/HowItWorks.ReadWriteCapacityMode.html#HowItWorks.OnDemand https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...