AWS Amplify
Fullstack platform for frontend and mobile developers to build, deploy, and host web and mobile apps without assembling AWS services by hand.
Verified against AWS documentation · 2026-08-28
Key facts
- 01Two halves: Amplify Hosting (Git-based CI/CD + CDN hosting) and Amplify backend (auth, data, storage, functions defined in code)
- 02Hosting supports static sites and SSR frameworks — React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Nuxt — with atomic deploys and per-branch preview environments
- 03Backend is a wrapper, not a new engine: auth = Cognito, API = AppSync/API Gateway, storage = S3, functions = Lambda underneath
- 04Push to Git → Amplify builds and deploys automatically; every branch can be its own environment
Exam triggers
Phrases and scenarios that point here.
- "Frontend or mobile developers with limited AWS experience" need to build a fullstack app fast
- "Git-based workflow" or "CI/CD for a web app with the least operational overhead" → Amplify Hosting
- "Quickly add authentication / API / storage to a web or mobile app" without managing individual services
- Static or server-side rendered website with automatic deploys on every commit
Not this service
- Full control over each pipeline stage → CodePipeline + CodeBuild
- Static site where you want to own the CDN config → S3 + CloudFront
- Testing apps on real physical phones → Device Farm
- General-purpose infrastructure as code → CloudFormation or CDK
Use cases
- 01A two-person startup ships a React app with login, a GraphQL API, and file uploads in a week — no one on the team has touched IAM policies directly
- 02Marketing site where every Git branch gets its own preview URL, so designers review changes before merge instead of after deploy
- 03Mobile app backend (auth + data sync + push-ready storage) stood up by the iOS developer, not a dedicated cloud team
- 04Agency hosting a dozen client sites: push to main, Amplify builds and deploys each one — zero servers, zero pipelines to maintain
- 05Next.js SSR app that needs a CDN, HTTPS, and custom domain out of the box without wiring CloudFront, ACM, and Route 53 manually
How it's charged
- 01Hosting bills three dimensions: build minutes, storage per GB-month, and data served per GB — larger build instance sizes cost more per minute
- 02SSR apps add per-request and compute-duration charges on top of static hosting dimensions
- 03Backend resources are billed as the underlying services (Cognito MAUs, AppSync requests, DynamoDB, S3, Lambda) — Amplify itself adds no markup
- 04Common billing surprise: PR preview branches trigger full builds and consume build minutes; long framework builds multiply this fast
- 05Free tier covers small projects end-to-end; a low-traffic static site often runs at effectively zero
