AWS Migration Evaluator review
A free AWS assessment service for estimating migration costs and preparing business cases.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
AWS Migration Evaluator is a managed assessment service for organizations planning to migrate on-premises workloads to AWS. It is aimed at mid-market and enterprise teams that need cost estimates and a business case before committing to a migration. Assessments cover physical and virtual x86 servers, attached block storage, and Microsoft SQL Server databases. The service can collect inventory and utilization data with an agentless Migration Evaluator Collector, or work from existing files instead.
Cost modeling estimates Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and operating-system license costs, and compares bring-your-own-license with license-included approaches. Quick Insights, business-case reports, and detailed exports give teams material to review and share; export formats include CSV, JSON, and Excel. The service is free, so its value is in assessment and planning rather than a paid tier structure. Its modeling covers AWS public regions except Mainland China regions, which is an important boundary for organizations whose plans involve those regions.
Migration Evaluator integrates with AWS Migration Hub and AWS Application Discovery Service. It does not itself perform application dependency mapping: dependency visualization comes through Migration Hub, so teams that need that view should account for the additional service. AWS documentation is the stated support channel, and deployment options include cloud and self-hosted. Choose Migration Evaluator when the decision is specifically about sizing and making the business case for AWS; teams comparing multiple cloud targets or seeking dependency mapping within a single assessment tool should consider another approach.
AWS Migration Evaluator pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Agentless discovery or inventory and utilization file uploads
- Compares EC2, EBS, and operating-system license costs
- Business-case reports with CSV, JSON, and Excel exports
- Where it doesn't
- Assesses AWS only, not other cloud targets
- Dependency visualization requires AWS Migration Hub
- Covers specified server, storage, and SQL Server workloads
AWS Migration Evaluator fact sheet, pricing and score →
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