Requester Pays

💰 What is S3 "Requester Pays"?

Requester Pays is a feature that shifts the data transfer and request costs from the bucket owner to the requester.

🧾 Normally, the bucket owner pays for all requests and downloads.
But with Requester Pays enabled, the user downloading or accessing data pays instead.

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🎯 When to Use Requester Pays

Scenario	Benefit
Public data lakes (e.g., Open Government Data)	Owner avoids bandwidth costs
Cross-account access for partners/vendors	Each account pays its own usage
High-traffic archives (e.g., ML datasets, research)	Avoid unexpected bills on the owner
Shared team resources in enterprise	Ensures chargeback by usage

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🔐 Key Requirements

• Bucket owner must enable requester pays

• Requester must use AWS CLI/SDK and include RequestPayer=requester

• No anonymous access is allowed

• Requester’s account will be billed for data transfer and GET/list requests

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📋 What Gets Charged?

Action	Charged to Requester?
GET Object	✅ Yes
LIST Objects	✅ Yes
HEAD Object	✅ Yes
PUT/DELETE Object	❌ No (still billed to owner)
Storage (per GB/month)	❌ No (always paid by owner)

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🔧 How to Enable Requester Pays

✅ AWS CLI

aws s3api put-bucket-request-payment \
  --bucket my-bucket \
  --request-payment-configuration Payer=Requester

🔍 Check if enabled

aws s3api get-bucket-request-payment --bucket my-bucket

🧑‍💻 Requester must use:

aws s3 cp s3://my-bucket/data.csv ./ --request-payer requester

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🛠️ Terraform Example

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "requester_bucket" {
  bucket = "yuva-requester-pays-demo"
}

resource "aws_s3_bucket_request_payment_configuration" "rp" {
  bucket = aws_s3_bucket.requester_bucket.id
  payer  = "Requester"
}

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🚫 Limitations

Limitation	Description
❌ No anonymous public access	All requests must be authenticated
❌ No access via S3 website endpoint	Only supported via AWS SDK/CLI/REST
❌ Not for S3 Glacier objects	Only works with Standard/IA classes
❗ Billing granularity	Only requester’s AWS account is billed

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🧠 Best Practices

• Use bucket policies to allow s3:GetObject only if RequestPayer = requester

• Document usage expectations in shared/public datasets

• Combine with cost allocation tags for tracking

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🧾 Sample Bucket Policy (for requesters)

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowGetWithRequesterPays",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": "s3:GetObject",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "s3:RequestObjectTag/requester": "true"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

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✅ TL;DR Summary

Feature	Description
What is it?	Requester pays for data access (not owner)
Who uses it?	Public datasets, shared buckets, cross-account
Owner pays?	Only for storage, not for GET/LIST requests
Requester pays?	For GET, LIST, HEAD, etc.
Anonymous?	❌ Not allowed
Access Method?	SDK, CLI, REST only

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