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What's the Difference Between Amazon EBS and Amazon EBS Recycle Bin?

Compare Amazon EBS and Amazon EBS Recycle Bin side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Comparisons
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS Recycle Bin
Category

Storage, Block Storage

Storage, Data Protection
Description

High-performance block storage at any scale

Recover accidentally deleted EBS snapshots and EBS-backed AMIs with retention rules.
Best for
  • Boot volumes
  • Databases
  • Enterprise applications
  • Throughput-intensive workloads
  • Accidental deletion recovery
  • Data protection
  • Compliance
  • Snapshot retention
Key features
  • SSD & HDD types
  • Snapshots
  • Encryption
  • Multi-attach
  • Elastic Volumes
  • Retention rules
  • Tag-based rules
  • Lock rules
  • Cross-region support
  • API access
Pricing model

Pay per GB provisioned per month + IOPS

Pay for retained snapshot storage
Free tier

Yes

No
Expert take

“Choose gp3 for most general workloads since you get 3,000 IOPS baseline at a lower cost than gp2. For databases needing consistent sub-millisecond latency, io2 Block Express delivers up to 256,000 IOPS with 99.999% durability.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Recycle Bin retains accidentally deleted EBS snapshots and AMIs for a configurable period. It acts as a safety net against unintentional data loss without manual processes.”
— Riku Kobayashi, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon EBS »

Learn more about Amazon EBS Recycle Bin »

When to use Amazon EBS or Amazon EBS Recycle Bin

Use Amazon EBS when:

  • Boot volumes
  • Databases
  • Enterprise applications
  • Throughput-intensive workloads

Learn more about Amazon EBS »

Use Amazon EBS Recycle Bin when:

  • Accidental deletion recovery
  • Data protection
  • Compliance
  • Snapshot retention

Learn more about Amazon EBS Recycle Bin »

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