| Cost | One-off or monthly | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment and planning | One-off | Number of workloads and how well they are documented |
| Migration engineering | One-off | How much is rehosted as-is versus changed on the way |
| Parallel running | One-off | How long old and new environments both run during cutover |
| Data transfer | One-off and monthly | Data volume, and traffic leaving AWS |
| Training | One-off | How much of the team is new to AWS |
| Compute, storage, databases | Monthly | Instance sizes, hours running, storage and backup volume |
| Licences and support | Monthly | Windows and SQL Server licensing, and the AWS support plan |
Companies in Egypt asking what a cloud migration costs usually get one of two unhelpful answers: a single headline number with no assumptions behind it, or "it depends". The honest answer is that it depends on a short list of things you can measure, and that the monthly part can be priced from AWS's own published rates before you commit to anything.
This guide breaks the cloud migration cost down into its parts, prices a small example on AWS from published figures, explains where AWS funding fits, and shows how to build an estimate you can defend. Region choice matters to the price, so read it alongside our guide to choosing an AWS region in Egypt.
The one-off cost of moving
These costs end when the migration does, but they are often where budgets go wrong:
- Assessment and planning. An inventory of servers, databases, storage and licences, what each costs today, and how they depend on each other. This is also the first phase of AWS's Migration Acceleration Program, and the business case any funding request rests on.
- Migration engineering. Moving a virtual machine as it is (rehosting) costs far less effort than changing it on the way, for example moving a database to a managed service. Decide per workload; changing everything at once is the most common reason estimates are exceeded.
- Running two environments. During cutover you pay for the old setup and AWS at the same time. Short, planned waves keep this overlap small.
- Data transfer. Moving large data sets takes time and bandwidth. AWS does not charge for data transferred in, but traffic leaving AWS is billed, which matters if systems stay split between AWS and your data centre for a while.
- Training. A team new to AWS needs time to learn to run it. Budget for it rather than discovering it after go-live.
The monthly cost of running on AWS
The run rate is the part you will pay for years, and it is the easiest to estimate badly. The usual mistakes are sizing to peak capacity instead of real use, forgetting storage and backups, and pricing the wrong region:
- Compute. Instance size multiplied by the hours it runs. Development and test environments that run only in working hours cost a fraction of production.
- Storage and backups. Disk volumes, snapshots and object storage grow over time; estimate today's volume and its growth.
- Managed databases. Usually more per hour than a database on a virtual machine, but they remove patching, backups and failover work.
- Licences. Windows and SQL Server can be licence-included in AWS's price or brought with you, depending on your agreements; this choice can move the bill noticeably.
- Support and monitoring. An AWS support plan and monitoring tools are small next to compute, but they are not zero.
A worked example from AWS's published prices
To show how the run rate is built, take a small estate: four application servers and two database servers, all Linux, running all month. The prices are AWS's published on-demand prices for the UAE region (me-central-1), checked on 5 November 2026. Each application server is a t3.medium (2 vCPU, 4 GiB) with a 50 GB disk; each database server is an m6i.large (2 vCPU, 8 GiB) with a 500 GB disk. All disks are gp3 at their included baseline performance, and the backups hold the equivalent of one full copy of every disk, 1,200 GB in snapshots.
| Item | Quantity | Unit price | Total per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| t3.medium, application servers | 4 | $36.65 a month | $146.60 |
| m6i.large, database servers | 2 | $85.92 a month | $171.84 |
| gp3 disks | 1,200 GB | $0.0968 per GB | $116.16 |
| EBS snapshots (backups) | 1,200 GB | $0.055 per GB | $66.00 |
| Total before data transfer and support | $500.60 |
Three things are deliberately left out. Data transfer depends on how much traffic leaves AWS, which differs widely between a back-office system and a public website. A managed database such as Amazon RDS would replace the two database servers with a different, usually higher, hourly price that includes patching, backups and failover. Support depends on the AWS support plan you choose. Price each one with your own volumes in the AWS Pricing Calculator.
Notice that storage and backups add more than half as much again as the compute. Estimates that price only servers are the most common reason a first AWS bill comes in higher than planned.
Lowering the run rate with Savings Plans
Savings Plans lower the compute price in exchange for committing to a fixed hourly spend for one or three years. For the same six servers on a one-year term with no upfront payment, AWS's published rates for the UAE region on 5 November 2026 give:
| Pricing | 4 × t3.medium | 2 × m6i.large | Total | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-demand | $146.60 | $171.84 | $318.44 | |
| Compute Savings Plan | $120.00 | $138.76 | $258.76 | 19% |
| EC2 Instance Savings Plan | $92.28 | $113.68 | $205.96 | 35% |
The deeper discount comes with less flexibility: an EC2 Instance Savings Plan applies to one instance family in one region, while a Compute Savings Plan follows your usage across families and regions. Commit only to the baseline you are sure of, after a few weeks of real usage on AWS, not before the migration. Switching non-production servers off outside working hours lowers the bill further, and costs nothing to commit to.
Region matters too. On AWS's published prices of 15 October 2026, the m6i.large costs $96.36 a month in Bahrain against $85.92 in the UAE, and $83.95 in Frankfurt. A difference of a few dollars per server becomes real money across an estate over three years, which is why region choice belongs in the estimate, not after it.
How credits and MAP reduce the cost
AWS funding mostly applies to the one-off cost of moving, not to your future bill:
- MAP offsets part of the cost of a committed migration, sized to its scope and released in stages as migrated workloads are evidenced. Our guide to MAP for companies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia explains how.
- Partner migration funding (POA) can be requested by a Select tier or higher AWS Partner for smaller migrations.
- POC funding pays for a test of one workload before you commit, which is cheaper than finding out during the migration. See the AWS POC funding guide.
- AWS Activate gives startups credits for their own usage, which effectively lowers the run rate for a period.
AWS says partner benefits may not be available in every market, so confirm the terms for Egypt before you count funding in the budget. You can compare the AWS funding programmes side by side.
How to build an estimate you can defend
- List what you run. Every server, database and storage volume, with its real use, not its provisioned size.
- Write down today's cost. Hardware, hosting, licences, support contracts and the people who run it. Without this there is no comparison.
- Choose a region per workload. Price each one where it will actually run.
- Price the run rate. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator with your real sizes and hours.
- Estimate the one-off cost by wave. Effort per workload, the overlap of parallel running, and data transfer.
- Subtract only confirmed funding. Count credits in the budget once AWS has approved them in writing, not before.
Our AWS cost forecasting service builds this model from your actual usage, separating one-off migration cost from the monthly run rate, and our AWS migration service in Egypt runs the move itself.
Next steps
If you want to know what your migration would cost and which AWS funding could offset it, start with the free credit eligibility check. It takes a few minutes, and we come back with what we would need to cost it properly. Nothing here is a quote or a promise of funding.