LearnGlossary

What is gp3 in AWS?

Updated 26 October 2026 · Published by Zoorik

gp3 in AWS is a General Purpose SSD (solid-state drive) volume type in Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). AWS calls it the lowest cost SSD volume in EBS. You set its speed apart from its size.

What a gp3 EBS volume includes

Sizes run from 1 GiB to 64 TiB. At any size, the storage price includes:

  • 3,000 IOPS, or input/output operations per second.
  • 125 MiB/s of throughput, the data moved each second.

You can pay for more, up to 80,000 IOPS and 2,000 MiB/s. Past 3,000 IOPS, a volume needs 1 GiB per 500 IOPS.

A gp3 volume doesn’t burst. It can hold the speed you set with no time limit.

An example

Say a database on a 100 GiB gp3 volume in AWS needs 6,000 IOPS.

  • The volume stays at 100 GiB.
  • 3,000 IOPS come with the storage.
  • The other 3,000 cost extra.
At 6,000 IOPS, the same 100 GiB volume is charged for 3,000 extra IOPS One bar for one 100 GiB gp3 volume set to 6,000 IOPS, on a scale from 0 to 6,000 IOPS. The first 3,000 IOPS, drawn as an outline, are labelled included with storage. The other 3,000 IOPS, drawn in amber, are labelled charged as extra. A note under the bar reads volume size 100 GiB, unchanged. At 6,000 IOPS, the same 100 GiB volume is charged for 3,000 extra IOPS Included with storage3,000 IOPSCharged as extra3,000 IOPS01,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,000IOPSVolume size100 GiB, unchanged
An illustration of the page’s example: a 100 GiB gp3 volume set to 6,000 IOPS, where the first 3,000 IOPS come with the storage, the other 3,000 cost extra, and the size stays the same.

Why it matters for your cloud cost

  • gp3 storage in AWS is priced per GB you provision each month, used or not.
  • Extra IOPS and throughput are charged separately until you release them.
  • Set for a busy hour, they cost the same in quiet hours too.
  • In October 2026, AWS says gp3 costs up to 20% less per GiB than gp2. Prices change.

Amoeba moves a VM’s data disks onto one pool sized to your data, then rightsizes it autonomously. On AWS, the pool is built from gp3 volumes. Each one gets at least 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s, and more when the VM’s measured load needs it.

The free assessment works out your own figure.

Read next: gp2 vs gp3: pricing, performance and how to migrate

Sources: AWS, “Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD volumes” (opens in a new tab); AWS, “Amazon EBS volume types” (opens in a new tab); AWS, “Amazon EBS pricing” (opens in a new tab).

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