By default, CloudWatch Log Groups use the Standard log class, which applies higher rates for both ingestion and storage. AWS also offers an Infrequent Access (IA) log class designed for logs that are rarely queried — such as audit trails, debugging output, or compliance records. Many teams assume storage is the dominant cost driver in CloudWatch, but in high-volume environments, ingestion costs can account for the majority of spend. When logs that are infrequently accessed are ingested into the Standard class, it leads to unnecessary costs without impacting observability. The IA log class offers significantly reduced rates for ingestion and storage, making it a better fit for logs used primarily for post-incident review, compliance retention, or ad hoc forensic analysis.
CloudWatch Logs are billed based on: * Ingestion volume per GB * Storage per GB-month * Querying via Logs Insights (optional) By default, Log Groups are set to the **Standard** log class. However, AWS offers an **Infrequent Access** (IA) log class with significantly lower ingestion and storage rates. This class is ideal for logs accessed occasionally, such as security audits, application debugging, or forensic analysis. Because the log class must be set at creation, many environments default to Standard even when IA would be more cost-effective.
