Yes. While there is a pretty hefty up-front cost to all the hardware and fiber interconnects AWS makes between servers, between AZs, and to the internet (probably in the millions per-dc including labor), the margin they charge per-gb is insanely high to the point where they likely made all of it back within the first day it was installed, with any extra usage in the years after being pure margin.
If we're looking only at egress, we can even find cheaper alternatives. OVH, for example, offers VPS' with 500Mbps unlimited for 10 euros a month, 1Gbps for 20 euros, etc.
It's not unlimited, but 20TB is more than enough for the most use cases.
Not really...
https://www.hostgator.com/tos/vps-tos
VPS accounts may not:
exceed a 15 minute load average greater than two (2) times the amount of CPU cores given.
run public IRCd's or malicious bots.
run any type of BitTorrent client or tracker that links to or downloads illegal content.
use an Open/Public proxy, or utilize a proxy to access illegal/malicious content.
se I/O intensive applications which adversely affect normal server operations.
I do see they have a bit of a vague way of getting out of hosting you if you're really being excessive on the network throughput. It largely sounds like as long as your network usage isn't causing other customer impacts its still unlimited. I imagine even OVH or any other hosting service will have similar terminology along the lines of any usage that negatively impacts other customers is prohibited.
https://www.hostgator.com/tos/acceptable-use-policy
You may not consume excessive amounts of server or network resources or use the Services in any way which results in server performance issues or which interrupts service for other customers. Prohibited activities that contribute to excessive use, include without limitation:
Hosting or linking to an anonymous proxy server;
Operating a file sharing site;
Hosting scripts or processes that adversely impact our systems; or
Utilizing software that interfaces with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network.
https://us.ovhcloud.com/order/vps/?v=3#/vps/build?selection=...
Though I don't know how well it compares.
Edit: pricing: https://us.ovhcloud.com/public-cloud/prices/#containers-and-...
But for write once, read a handful of times (e.g. a webhook system that basically is write once, read once of <32KB objects with long history for either redelivery attempts or replaying the entire stream for a point of time), request prices end up being the biggest cost.
Free per object requests is super game-able. Want 1000 free requests per second, just rotate through 100 identical objects.
1,000 reads per second is 2.6 billion per month. At S3 prices, that wound cost around $1,040.
100x storage is pretty minimal to achieve this. For example:
100x 128KiB = $0.000192/month
100x 10MiB = $0.015/month
100x 1GiB = $1.50/month
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://www.backblaze.com/b2/b2-transactions-price.html
The lack of 9c per GB to egress is the killer.
I can rent unlimited 250mbit servers for 14 euros a month from Scaleway. It is truly unmetered; I've been a customer for years and do about 40 terabytes of egress a month on this box.
AWS would charge me $3800 for the egress alone (using the calculator). That is certainly almost all pure margin for them, when Scaleway will happily let me egress 40TB a month for years on 13.99 euro per month (plus I get a low-spec bare metal server at this price too).