QuickSight Pricing and QuickSight metircs

[murili]

@ksenstad

I have a customer who is choosing between having “User-based pricing” versus “Capacity-based pricing” for their reader users. I did a lot of research about pricing, reader sessions, etc, but got confused at the end and would like to clarify a few questions related to both pricing and metrics:

1. For “User-based pricing” the price is fixed $3 per user per month regardless of user being active or inactive, is it correct?
2. For “User-based pricing” we don’t have any concept of a reader session, it’s $3 per month no matter how long the user interacted with dashboard(s), correct?
3. For “Capacity-based procing” we have a price per number of sessions (min 500sessions/$250/month). Can I clarify here are 500 sessions meant for a single user, or just 500 sessions across all users, meaning that basically per session price is $0.5)?
4. For “Capacity-based procing” - what if 500 sessions were purchased but as a result more sessions are needed, does this mean that any extra sessions will go for $0.5?
5. Is there any max $number per user for “Capacity-based procing” (e.g. how it was before for a user-priced approach $0.3 per session and up to max $5 regardless how many sessions reader user had?)
6. For “Capacity-based procing” - imagine user opened a few dashboards in each tab. The moment a user opens a dashboard 30 mins session starts, correct? So, for 5 dashboards is it considered as one session or we consider session is linked to a one dashboard only, meaning that we have 5 sessions for a user?
7. For “Capacity-based procing” - even if the user session lasted less than 30 mins (e.g. just 5 mins), the cost will be still as for 30 mins session, correct?

And also I have a question about QS session metrics. I read from different places that such metrics don’t exist, correct? We need a metric to show total number of sessions (but if I’m not mistaken, this somehow could be taken from CUR, correct?) but also we need to have a metric user/#of sessions, and this I think can’t be derived from anywhere? I know that from CloudTrail we have a GetDashboard event, which means the user opened a dashboard, but it’s not related to the session.

You’ve asked some great questions about QuickSight pricing and metrics. Let me address each of your points:

1. User-based pricing: Correct, it’s $3 per user per month, regardless of activity.

2. User-based pricing and reader sessions: Correct, there’s no concept of reader sessions. It’s a flat $3 per month per user.

3. Capacity-based pricing: The 500 sessions are across all users, not per user. So yes, it’s essentially $0.5 per session. Here is addtional information on capacity pricing breakdown.

4. Exceeding purchased capacity: Yes, additional sessions beyond the purchased capacity are charged at $0.5 per session.

5. Maximum cost per user in capacity-based pricing: There’s no maximum cost per user in capacity-based pricing. The $5 cap was for the older reader session pricing model.

6. Multiple dashboards and sessions: My understanding of the definition of a user session in Quicksight is any time an individual interacts with a dashboard regardless if its in the Quicksight UI or embedded. A Reader Session starts with user-initiated action (e.g., login, dashboard load, page refresh, drill-down or filtering) and runs for next 30-minutes. Keeping Amazon QuickSight open in a background browser window/tab does not result in active sessions until the Reader initiates action on page.

7. Session duration: Correct, even if a session lasts less than 30 minutes, it’s still counted (and charged) as a full session.

Regarding QuickSight session metrics:
please visit these two links below

Average number of Sessions per User

QuickSight now provides standardized user level cost and usage data

These should get you headed in the right direction.