AWS began offering flat-rate pricing on Direct Connect on September 15, 2026. Customers with 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps dedicated connections can now pay a fixed hourly rate instead of a per-gigabyte charge for data leaving AWS (AWS, 2026). For enterprises moving large, steady volumes between their own data centres and AWS, the least predictable line on the network bill becomes a fixed one.
It was not the only change this month to how cloud and developer platforms charge for usage. Microsoft's regional premiums for AI model deployments took effect on September 1, its older Azure Maps pricing tier was retired on September 15, and GitLab will tie API rate limits to subscription tier from October 19. These are separate decisions by separate companies. What they share is that each makes the buyer's own choices, such as geographic scope, data residency or plan tier, decide what they pay or how much they can use.
AWS stops metering egress on Direct Connect, for a fixed fee
Under the new model, customers pick one of five pricing tiers, ranging from same-metro to global coverage. Traffic between the Direct Connect location and the AWS Regions covered by that tier carries no data transfer out charge (AWS, 2026). Traffic from Regions outside the chosen tier is still billed at standard Direct Connect data transfer rates. Flat-rate pricing applies only to dedicated connections, at all Direct Connect locations in commercial Regions, with China excluded (AWS Documentation, 2026).
AWS also introduced a "port-pair": two dedicated connections on separate devices or locations, sharing the same bandwidth and tier. One carries traffic, the other stands by, and the second is included at no extra charge (AWS Documentation, 2026).
The trade is predictability for a higher base price. Megaport, an interconnection provider that sells access to Direct Connect, compares the published metered rate of $2.25 an hour for the port plus $0.02 per GB of egress against a flat rate of $10.96 an hour for the same example, with eligible egress included (Megaport, 2026). Network engineer Simon Painter puts that 10 Gbps Tier 1 port-pair at about $8,000 a month (Simon Painter, 2026).
A customer with light or bursty traffic will pay more on the flat rate. It favours sustained, high-volume transfer such as data centre migrations, backup replication and hybrid analytics. Painter describes it as the first time AWS has offered to stop metering egress on a hybrid circuit, and points to Microsoft's ExpressRoute Local as the earlier move in the same direction.
Microsoft prices data residency into AI deployments
Since September 1, Microsoft Foundry has charged more to keep model inference inside a geography. Global deployment pricing is unchanged. EU Data Zone deployments now cost 9% above Global, regional deployments outside the US cost 7% to 16% above Global, and a new APAC Data Zone launched at 20% above Global (Microsoft, 2026).
The detail that matters for budgeting is who pays now. For pay-as-you-go deployments, the premiums apply only to models launched on or after September 1, so customers who stay on existing models see no increase until they upgrade. For Provisioned Throughput (PTU), the increase applies to every customer with EU Data Zone or regional PTUs outside the US (Microsoft, 2026). Microsoft's stated reason is that serving AI within one geography at high availability costs more than a shared global pool.
For European buyers with residency obligations, compliance now shows up as a visible premium on every token. It also means the next model upgrade doubles as a pricing event.
Azure Maps accounts moved to Gen2 pricing
On September 15, Microsoft retired the Azure Maps Gen1 pricing tier, covering the Standard S0 and S1 plans, and automatically moved remaining accounts to Gen2 pricing (Microsoft Q&A, 2023). The retirement was announced in 2023, so the date was not a surprise. Microsoft describes Gen2 as simpler pricing with access to all Azure Maps features and higher queries-per-second limits.
What it costs depends on the workload. OnTerra Systems, a mapping reseller that sells alternatives and migration services, says geocoding went from $0.50 per 1,000 transactions under Gen1 S0 to $4.50 per 1,000 under Gen2, and puts the increase for affected customers at five to nine times (OnTerra Systems, 2026, reseller press release). We could not confirm those figures against an independent source, and the real change for any account depends on which APIs it calls.
GitLab ties API capacity to plan tier
GitLab says rate limits on GitLab.com will align with subscription tier, because it expects platform load to grow several times over this year as automation and agent workloads increase (GitLab, 2026). From October 19, unauthenticated traffic is capped at 60 requests per hour per IP address and authenticated Free users get 5,000 requests per hour. Premium users get 15,000 and Ultimate users 25,000 when those tiers move over in January 2027 (DevOps.com, 2026). The limits cover API traffic, web requests and authenticated Git operations over HTTPS, and apply per user and per top-level group.
The practical risk sits in automation that was never set up to authenticate. InfoWorld notes that an automated tool reaching a paid account without credentials gets the anonymous allowance, not the paid one (InfoWorld, 2026). Scripts, CI jobs and agents that pull projects anonymously are the likeliest to hit the 60-per-hour ceiling.
GitLab is not the first to do this. InfoWorld reports that GitHub has also introduced rate limits to control AI coding activity. In April, GitHub paused new sign-ups for several individual Copilot plans, saying agentic workflows were consuming far more compute than its pricing was built for (InfoWorld, 2026).
What connects them
None of these is a blanket list-price increase, and one of them, Direct Connect, can lower bills for heavy users. The common thread is narrower. Each vendor has attached a cost or a ceiling to a choice the buyer now has to make explicitly. Pick the wrong Direct Connect tier and out-of-tier traffic is metered. Upgrade a Foundry model in the EU and the residency premium comes with it. Leave a pipeline unauthenticated and GitLab treats it as anonymous.
For buyers, the work shifts from reading a price sheet to mapping actual usage: which Regions data flows between, where inference has to run, and which automated clients call which APIs with what credentials.
What to watch
GitLab will run two preview windows, on October 7 and October 14 from 8 a.m. to noon Pacific, when Free and unauthenticated traffic runs under the new limits (DevOps.com, 2026). Those windows are the cheapest way to find automation that will break on October 19. Premium and Ultimate customers follow in January 2027. It is not yet clear whether Google Cloud or Microsoft will answer AWS with flat-rate terms of their own on Cloud Interconnect or on ExpressRoute beyond the Local offering.
Sources
- AWS. "AWS Direct Connect announces flat-rate pricing for dedicated connections." 2026. https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2026/09/aws-direct-connect-announces-flat-rate-pricing/
- AWS. "AWS Direct Connect Flat-Rate Pricing." 2026. https://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/pricing/flat-rate/
- AWS Documentation. "Flat-rate pricing, AWS Direct Connect Pricing Guide." 2026. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/directconnect/latest/PricingGuide/pricing-flat-rate.html
- Megaport. "Predictable Cloud Egress with AWS Direct Connect Flat-rate Pricing." 2026. https://www.megaport.com/blog/predictable-cloud-egress-is-finally-here-how-megaport-unlocks-it-all/
- Simon Painter. "Direct Connect goes flat rate, and the war on egress gets a second front." 2026. https://www.simonpainter.com/direct-connect-goes-flat-rate/
- Microsoft. "Microsoft Foundry Model Deployment Pricing Update." Microsoft Community Hub, 2026. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/microsoft-foundry-model-deployment-pricing-update/4535385
- Microsoft. "Retirement Announcement: Azure Maps Gen1 Price Tier." Microsoft Q&A, 2023. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1377213/retirement-announcement-azure-maps-gen1-price-tier
- OnTerra Systems (reseller press release via GlobeNewswire). "Azure Maps Gen1 Pricing Customers To Be Migrated To Gen2 Pricing in September 2026, A 9x Cost Increase." 2026. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/06/22/3315226/0/en/azure-maps-gen1-pricing-customers-to-be-migrated-to-gen2-pricing-in-september-2026-a-9x-cost-increase.html
- GitLab. "Rate limits on GitLab.com are changing." 2026. https://about.gitlab.com/blog/rate-limit-change-2026/
- DevOps.com. "GitLab Tightens Rate Limits as Coding Agents Drive Demand." 2026. https://devops.com/gitlab-tightens-rate-limits-as-coding-agents-drive-demand/
- InfoWorld. "GitLab joins rush to slow AI coders with rate limits." 2026. https://www.infoworld.com/article/4223949/gitlab-joins-rush-to-slow-ai-coders-with-rate-limits.html
- InfoWorld. "GitHub pauses new Copilot sign-ups as agentic AI strains infrastructure." 2026. https://www.infoworld.com/article/4161278/github-pauses-new-copilot-sign-ups-as-agentic-ai-strains-infrastructure.html