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What's the Difference Between Amazon Route 53 and Amazon Route 53 Resolver?

Compare Amazon Route 53 and Amazon Route 53 Resolver side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Comparisons
Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 Resolver
Category

Networking, DNS

Networking, DNS
Description

Global domain name system (DNS) to route user traffic with low latency

Recursive DNS for Amazon VPC with conditional forwarding rules for hybrid DNS resolution.
Best for
  • Domain registration
  • DNS routing
  • Health checking
  • Traffic management
  • Hybrid DNS
  • DNS forwarding
  • DNS firewall
  • Centralized DNS management
Key features
  • DNS failover
  • Latency-based routing
  • Geolocation routing
  • Traffic flow
  • DNSSEC
  • Inbound/outbound endpoints
  • Conditional forwarding
  • DNS Firewall
  • Query logging
  • Resolver rules sharing
Pricing model

Pay per hosted zone + queries + health checks

Pay per endpoint + billion queries
Free tier

No

No
Expert take

“Route 53 routing policies let you implement sophisticated traffic management without touching your application. Latency-based routing sends users to the closest Region, failover routing automatically redirects away from unhealthy endpoints, and weighted routing enables blue-green deployments.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Amazon Route 53 Resolver enables DNS resolution between your VPC and on-premises networks. Resolver rules forward queries for specific domains to your corporate DNS servers.”
— Gary McLean, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon Route 53 »

Learn more about Amazon Route 53 Resolver »

When to use Amazon Route 53 or Amazon Route 53 Resolver

Use Amazon Route 53 when:

  • Domain registration
  • DNS routing
  • Health checking
  • Traffic management

Learn more about Amazon Route 53 »

Use Amazon Route 53 Resolver when:

  • Hybrid DNS
  • DNS forwarding
  • DNS firewall
  • Centralized DNS management

Learn more about Amazon Route 53 Resolver »

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