How to Handle Costs with Amazon S3's Requester Pays Option

Jay TilluJay Tillu
4 min read

Table of contents

Arjun had been sharing large open datasets from his Amazon S3 bucket with clients around the world.

But over time, he noticed his AWS bill was rising — not from storing the data, but from downloads made by others.

“Why am I paying for the bandwidth when they are downloading my files?” he wondered.

That’s when he discovered a lesser-known S3 feature:
📦 S3 Requester Pays

🧾 The Default: Bucket Owner Pays

By default, the S3 bucket owner is charged for:

  • Storage (per GB stored)

  • AND

  • Data transfer costs (when someone downloads files)

Even if someone else downloads 100 GB from Arjun’s bucket, the bill lands in his account.

💡 Enter: Requester Pays

With Requester Pays, Arjun can flip the model:

The requester (i.e., the downloader) pays for the networking costs associated with the download — not Arjun.

✅ When to Use Requester Pays

  • You’re hosting public or shared datasets

  • You want to offload download costs to the users

  • Your data is accessed by other AWS accounts

  • You’re distributing large files or scientific data
    (e.g., genome data, satellite images, machine learning sets)

🚫 Requester Pays requires:

  • The requester must be an authenticated AWS identity (IAM user/role)

  • AWS needs to know who to bill for the download

  • Are anonymous by nature

  • Anyone on the internet can access them without logging in

  • So AWS has no way to bill them — and will block the download in a Requester Pays bucket

❌ So Public URL and Requester Pay don’t work together.

📌 So What Happens If Arjun Shares a Public URL?

If Requester Pays is enabled and someone tries to download via a public URL, they’ll get:

bashCopyEdit403 Access Denied – Requester Pays buckets require authentication

🧠 Alternative Approach for Public Sharing

If Arjun wants anyone on the internet to access the files freely:

  • ✅ He can make the bucket or objects public

  • ❌ But he will pay for all download costs

So it's a tradeoff:
🔐 Requester Pays = access is limited to authenticated AWS users
🌐 Public access = anyone can download, but you pay

⚠️ Rules You Need to Know

  1. 🧍‍♂️ The requester must be authenticated.

    • No anonymous access

    • AWS must know who to bill

  2. 🧾 Bucket owner still pays for storage.

    • Only the data transfer cost is passed to the requester

  3. 🔐 Permissions still apply.

    • Just because it's Requester Pays doesn’t make it public — users still need proper IAM permissions or presigned URLs

🧪 Real-World Scenario

Imagine Arjun uploads 500GB of research data to S3. He wants anyone in the research community to access it — but doesn’t want to fund the bandwidth cost.

He enables Requester Pays on the bucket.

Now, when other AWS users (authenticated) download the data:

  • ✅ They get access (if permissions allow)

  • ✅ Arjun pays nothing for their download bandwidth

  • ✅ They pay for the transfer on their AWS bill

“I still share my data — but now others cover the download cost. Fair deal!” Arjun smiled.

🚀 Final Thought from Arjun

“S3 Requester Pays gave me a smart way to share my data without absorbing the cost. It’s perfect when collaboration meets cloud economics.”

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AWSAWS Certified Solutions Architect AssociateAmazon Web ServicesAmazon S3CloudCloud Computingcloud nativestorage

Written by

Jay Tillu
Jay Tillu

Hello! I'm Jay Tillu, an Information Security Engineer at Simple2Call. I have expertise in security frameworks and compliance, including NIST, ISO 27001, and ISO 27701. My specialities include Vulnerability Management, Threat Analysis, and Incident Response. I have also earned certifications in Google Cybersecurity and Microsoft Azure. I’m always eager to connect and discuss cybersecurity—let's get in touch!