Amazon Route 53 has a simple web-services interface that lets you get started in minutes. Your DNS records are organized into “hosted zones” that you configure with Route 53’s API. To use Route 53, you simply:
- Subscribe to the service by clicking on the sign-up button on this page.
- Create a hosted zone that can store DNS records for your domain. Upon creating the hosted zone, you receive four Route 53 name servers across four different Top-Level Domains (TLDs) to help ensure a high level of availability. If you don’t have a domain name, you can search for available domains and register them using the Route 53 console. If you have an existing domain name, you can opt to have it transferred to Route 53’s management so that you can conveniently manage your domain names and DNS configuration in a single location.
- Your hosted zone will be initially populated with a basic set of DNS records, including four virtual name servers that will answer queries for your domain. You can add, delete or change records in this set using the AWS Management Console or by calling the ChangeResourceRecordSet API. A list of supported DNS records is available here.
- If you want to keep your domain name with the current registrar, inform the registrar to update the name servers for your domain to the ones associated with your hosted zone. If you’ve registered a domain name with Route 53, your domain name will be automatically associated with the correct name servers.
To transfer your domain from another DNS service to Route 53, you:
- Get a list of your DNS record data for your domain name, generally available in the form of a “zone file” that you can get from your existing DNS provider.
- Follow the four getting started steps listed above.
By following these few simple steps, you’ll be able to set up your DNS entries and have Route 53 answering queries for your web application in just a few minutes. See our Technical Documentation for more detailed information about the Route 53 service and APIs.
Get Started with AWS for Free
Create a Free AccountOr Sign In to the Console
Receive twelve months of access to the AWS Free Tier and enjoy AWS Basic Support features including, 24x7x365 customer service, support forums, and more.
Please note that Amazon Route 53 is not currently available on the AWS Free Tier.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a globally distributed service that is foundational to the way people use the Internet. DNS uses a hierarchical name structure, and different levels in the hierarchy are each separated with a dot ( . ). Consider the domain names www.amazon.com and aws.amazon.com. In both these examples, “com” is the Top-Level Domain and “amazon” the Second-Level Domain. There can be any number of lower levels (e.g., “www” and “aws”) below the Second-Level Domain. Computers use the DNS hierarchy to translate human readable names like www.amazon.com into the IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to one another.
Route 53 is an “authoritative DNS” system. An authoritative DNS system provides an update mechanism that developers use to manage their public DNS names. It then answers DNS queries, translating domain names into IP address so computers can communicate with each other.
The name for our service (Route 53) comes from the fact that DNS servers respond to queries on port 53 and provide answers that route end users to your applications on the Internet. In the future, we will add additional routing capabilities to Route 53 to better help your users find the best way to your website or application.
Route 53 provides a simple set of APIs that make it easy to create and manage DNS records for your domains. You can call these directly; all this functionality can also be accessed via the AWS Management Console. For a full list of the available Route 53 APIs, please see the Amazon Route 53 API Reference Guide. Some of the most commonly used APIs and their functionality are listed below:
- CreateHostedZone: Creates a new hosted zone to contain your DNS data. After creating a Hosted Zone, you receive four name servers to which you can delegate your domain.
- GetHostedZone: Lists information about a specific hosted zone.
- DeleteHostedZone: Deletes a hosted zone.
- ChangeResourceRecordSets: Populates and edits the DNS resource records in a hosted zone.
- ListResourceRecordSets: Retrieves either all the resource record sets in a hosted zone or filtered by record name and type.
- CheckAvailability: Checks the availability of one domain.
- RegisterDomain: Registers the requested domain.
See our Technical Documentation for more detailed information about these APIs.
Route 53 uses a global network of DNS servers at a series of world-wide locations to offer you high availability and increased performance. Route 53 uses the following locations:
- Ashburn, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Chicago, IL
- Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
- Hayward, CA
- Jacksonville, FL
- Los Angeles, CA
- Miami, FL
- New York, NY
- Newark, NJ
- Palo Alto, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Seattle, WA
- South Bend, IN
- St. Louis, MO
- Amsterdam
- Dublin
- Frankfurt
- London
- Madrid
- Marseille
- Milan
- Paris
- Stockholm
- Warsaw
- Chennai
- Hong Kong
- Manila
- Mumbai
- New Delhi
- Osaka
- Seoul
- Singapore
- Taipei
- Tokyo
- Melbourne
- Sydney
- Rio de Janeiro
- Sao Paulo
With Route 53, you don’t have to pay any upfront fees or commit to the number of queries the service answers for your domain. Like other Amazon Web Services, you pay as you go, and only for what you use:
- Managing hosted zones You pay a monthly charge for each hosted zone managed with Route 53.
- Serving DNS queries You incur charges for every DNS query answered by the Amazon Route 53 service, except for queries to Alias A records that are mapped to Elastic Load Balancing instances or Amazon S3 website buckets which are provided at no additional charge.
- Managing domain names You pay a yearly charge for each domain name registered via or transferred into Route 53.
Your monthly bill from AWS will list your total usage and dollar amount for the Amazon Route 53 service separately from other AWS services.
Your use of this service is subject to the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement.
