Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 is the AWS managed DNS service with domain registration, intelligent routing policies, and health checks.
99.99% SLA — among the highest in AWS
UI has a steeper learning curve than most DNS providers
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.
Uptime · 30-day window
GitHub activity
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
Example request
curl https://github.com/mermade/aws2openapi/<endpoint> \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY"
# Some providers use X-Api-Key instead — verify in the docs.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.
Technical details
- Auth type
- api_key
- Pricing
- paid
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- python, javascript, java, go, ruby, csharp
- Response time
- 9 ms
- Last health check
- 5/12/2026, 7:36:33 AM
Endpoints
Parsed from the OpenAPI spec. Showing 12 of 70 non-deprecated endpoints.
/2013-04-01/accountlimit/{Type}/2013-04-01/change/{Id}/2013-04-01/checkeripranges/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/{CidrCollectionId}/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/{CidrCollectionId}/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/{CidrCollectionId}/2013-04-01/cidrcollection/{CidrCollectionId}/cidrblocks/2013-04-01/delegationset/2013-04-01/delegationset/2013-04-01/delegationset/{Id}58 more endpoints not shown. See the OpenAPI spec for the full list.
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