IBM NS1 Connect vs Amazon Route 53
Default scenario: At 50 hosted zones, 1B queries / month: IBM NS1 Connect (over plan limit: 30 queries / month (millions)), Amazon Route 53 $5,100/yr.
The services may differ in features, performance, support and the work you need to do yourself. Read the notes and test what matters to your setup.
Your selected usage
50 hosted zones, 1B queries / month
- IBM NS1 Connect: Over plan limit: 30 queries / month (millions)
- Amazon Route 53: $5,100/yr estimated
Estimated costs at different usage levels
| Usage | IBM NS1 Connect | Amazon Route 53 |
|---|---|---|
| Startup5 hosted zones, 20M queries / month | $1,188/yr$0 zones + $0 queries | $126/yr$2.50 zones + $8.00 queries |
| Mid-size50 hosted zones, 1B queries / month | —Over plan limit: 30 queries / month (millions) | $5,100/yr$25 zones + $400 queries |
| Large500 hosted zones, 10B queries / month | —Over plan limit: 30 queries / month (millions) | $51,000/yr$250 zones + $4,000 queries |
Uses each vendor’s first paid tier; volume discounts (e.g. Route 53 zones past 25, queries past 1B) lower real bills further. Try your own numbers against all dns providers.
Side by side
| IBM NS1 Connect | Amazon Route 53 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Managed authoritative DNS with traffic steering, formerly NS1, owned by IBM since 2023. Self-serve plans plus custom Premium contracts. | AWS's managed authoritative DNS service, billed per hosted zone and per query with no plan fee. |
| Headquarters | 🇺🇸 United States | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Parent jurisdiction | 🇺🇸 United States (IBM) | 🇺🇸 United States (Amazon) |
| EU self-serve plan | No / not documented | Available; check eligible plans and regions |
| GDPR DPA | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | subscription | payg |
| Free tier | 30-day free trial (50M queries/month, 500 records). | — |
| Open source | No | No |
| Source last checked | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-06 |
| Pricing evidence | Modeled rates | Published rates |
Which should you choose?
Choose IBM NS1 Connect if…
- you want to start free (30-day free trial (50M queries/month, 500 records))
Choose Amazon Route 53 if…
- it has the lower estimated bill at Startup usage
- you need EU data residency on a self-serve plan
Based on estimated list-price bills and the facts above. Features, performance and support aren’t scored.
IBM NS1 Connect pricing
Published rates converted using workload assumptions. Read the notes. Starting Essentials tier only, capped at 30M queries. The 1,000-record limit is not a calculator input; larger plans need a separate quote.
| Base fee / month |
|---|
| $99 |
Modelled on Essentials, "starting at $99/month" with 30-80M queries/month and 1,000 records (overage rate not published, so usage above 30M queries is treated as needing a bigger plan or contract). Standard starts at $349/month (50M-1B queries, 1,000-10,000 records). Premium (the enterprise tier most large customers are on) is contract-only. Vendr's public NS1 data (vendr.com/marketplace/ns1, Oct 2026) shows a median of $49,714/yr across 38 purchases, ranging $12,000-$374,703/yr. GDPR DPA via IBM's standard DPA.
IBM NS1 Connect plan limits, full rates and cheaper alternatives · official pricing page
Amazon Route 53 pricing
Calculated from the listed vendor rates; exclusions still apply.
| Zone / month | 1M DNS queries |
|---|---|
| $0.5 | $0.4 |
$0.50/hosted zone/month for the first 25 zones, $0.10/zone after that. Standard queries $0.40/M for the first 1B/month, $0.20/M above. Latency-based routing $0.60/M, geolocation/geoproximity $0.70/M. Alias queries to AWS resources (ELB, CloudFront, API Gateway, S3, etc.) are free. EU residency: Route 53 is available in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (Germany) partition with dedicated name servers; the standard commercial Route 53 is a global service. GDPR DPA via the AWS DPA.
Amazon Route 53 plan limits, full rates and cheaper alternatives · official pricing page
Frequently asked questions
Do IBM NS1 Connect and Amazon Route 53 offer EU data residency?
Amazon Route 53 offers EU data residency on a self-serve plan. IBM NS1 Connect doesn’t document it on a self-serve plan.
Do IBM NS1 Connect and Amazon Route 53 have a free tier or trial?
IBM NS1 Connect: 30-day free trial (50M queries/month, 500 records). Amazon Route 53 has no free tier or trial in our data.
Where are IBM NS1 Connect and Amazon Route 53 based?
IBM NS1 Connect is headquartered in the United States and owned by IBM (the United States). Amazon Route 53 is headquartered in the United States and owned by Amazon (the United States).