Amazon Route 53

UpOpen Sourcecloud by Amazon Web Services★62· JavaScript· MIT

Amazon Route 53 is the AWS managed DNS service with domain registration, intelligent routing policies, and health checks.

Visit site ↗Source ↗Health checked 12h ago

Use it when

99.99% SLA — among the highest in AWS

Watch for

UI has a steeper learning curve than most DNS providers

First check

Call Route53.createHostedZone via SDK, then changeResourceRecordSets to add A/CNAME/MX records. For AWS-internal targets use alias records to avoid per-query DNS fees.

Auth

api_key

CORS

HTTPS

Yes

Signup

Required

Latency

47 ms

Protocol

REST

Pricing

paid

Stars

Uptime · 30-day window

Probes: 30Uptime: 100%Avg latency: 47ms

GitHub activity

★ 62JavaScriptMIT17 open issuesLast commit 155d ago

About this API

Route 53 bundles authoritative DNS, health checks, and domain registration. The "53" refers to the DNS standard port. Within AWS infrastructure it is irreplaceable — most AWS services' failover and global routing depend on it.

Several routing policies extend DNS beyond simple name resolution: Simple returns one value; Weighted splits traffic by weight (good for A/B tests); Latency routes users to the lowest-latency endpoint; Geolocation routes by user region; Failover swaps active/standby based on health checks. Alias records are an AWS-only record type — they target AWS resources (ELB, CloudFront, S3 static sites) at the DNS layer while behaving like A records, and alias queries are free.

Domain registration lets you buy domains inside AWS (e.g. .com ~$13/year), though pricing is slightly above dedicated registrars like Namecheap or Cloudflare Registrar. A common pattern is: register elsewhere, host DNS on Route 53.

What you can build

1Point domains at AWS resources via DNS records
2Route users to the nearest endpoint via geo or latency policies
3Automate failover based on health checks
4Register domains directly inside AWS

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

99.99% SLA — among the highest in AWS
Alias records point to ELB / CloudFront / S3 at no DNS query cost
ACM integration for automatic SSL renewal

Limitations

UI has a steeper learning curve than most DNS providers
Domain registration prices are slightly higher than dedicated registrars

Getting started

Call Route53.createHostedZone via SDK, then changeResourceRecordSets to add A/CNAME/MX records. For AWS-internal targets use alias records to avoid per-query DNS fees.

FAQ

Is it free?+

Hosted zones cost ~$0.50/month and ~$0.40 per million queries. Alias queries are free.

Route 53 vs Cloudflare DNS?+

Cloudflare DNS is completely free and very fast — great for small projects. Route 53 integrates more deeply with AWS (alias, health checks, failover).

What's the default TTL?+

300 seconds (5 min). For stable production records, raise it to 3600+; lower it to 60 a few hours before planned changes to shorten propagation.