How much cheaper is NexDNS compared to Route 53?

Route 53 starts at $0.50 per hosted zone per month plus $0.40 per million DNS queries. NexDNS Starter is 2.90 €/mo flat for up to 10 zones and 500 records with no per-query billing. For a site doing 10M monthly DNS queries across 5 zones, Route 53 is around $6.50/month and NexDNS Starter is 2.90 €/month – and the gap widens with query volume.

Can NexDNS replicate Route 53's alias records to ELB / CloudFront?

Not with AWS-magic alias behaviour. NexDNS ALIAS resolves at query time to any hostname, including AWS endpoints, and returns their current IPs – so from the client’s perspective the result is equivalent. What it can’t do is recognise ELB target-group health or CloudFront’s CDN caching layer natively. If alias-to-AWS is central to your setup, Route 53 stays the better fit.

Does NexDNS offer latency-based or geo routing like Route 53?

NexDNS uses unicast nameservers in two independent EU locations and does not offer latency-based or geo routing. For advanced latency-steering or per-country routing, Route 53 and dedicated GeoDNS providers (NS1, DNSimple) have more mature feature sets – we don’t try to compete there.

What about DNSSEC pricing?

NexDNS includes DNSSEC on Pro plans at no per-zone extra cost. Route 53 charges for KMS key usage when DNSSEC is enabled (typically $1/key/month + key-usage fees) which can add $12+/zone/year.

Can I still integrate NexDNS with AWS services?

Yes – AWS services resolve DNS via standard resolvers, so NexDNS-hosted zones work identically to Route 53 from the AWS side. You lose the AWS-native alias shortcuts but gain flat pricing and ISPmanager compatibility.

Flat-rate alternative

NexDNS vs AWS Route 53

Predictable monthly pricing instead of per-query billing, with managed DNS that doesn’t require an AWS account to use.

At a glance

NexDNS · AWS Route 53

Deployment model: SaaS (managed)

SaaS (AWS account required)
Setup time: Account + zone in 2 minutes

AWS account, IAM policy, hosted zone creation
DNSSEC: Automatic signing on Pro and above

DNSSEC signing with KMS-managed keys (extra cost)
Pricing from: 6.90 €/mo (Pro plan)

$0.50 / hosted zone / month + $0.40 per million queries (tiered)

Route 53 fits when your infrastructure is deep in AWS – alias records to ELBs, CloudFront distributions, S3 buckets; health checks against ALBs; latency-based routing to AWS regions. It’s also billed per hosted zone and per million queries, which can get unpredictable as traffic scales. NexDNS is flat-monthly managed DNS with no per-query billing, native ALIAS record support (any HTTP-resolvable target, not just AWS), and compatibility with ISPmanager, Terraform, Certbot, and OctoDNS tooling that doesn’t assume an AWS account.

Feature comparison

How NexDNS stacks up against AWS Route 53 across the dimensions that matter.

Capability	NexDNS	AWS Route 53
Deployment model	SaaS (managed)	SaaS (AWS account required)
Setup time	Account + zone in 2 minutes	AWS account, IAM policy, hosted zone creation
Maintenance	Zero – fully managed	Zero – fully managed, but AWS-specific
DNSSEC	Automatic signing on Pro and above	DNSSEC signing with KMS-managed keys (extra cost)
API	REST API + ISPmanager / DNSmanager XML API compatibility (Pro and above)	AWS SDK / REST API, IAM-gated
CLI tool	Official `nexdns` CLI, DNS-as-Code YAML	`aws route53` in AWS CLI
Terraform provider	Official provider	`hashicorp/aws` (route53 resources)
ISPmanager compatibility	Full	None
Record types	A, AAAA, MX, CNAME, TXT, SRV, NS, CAA, PTR, ALIAS, TLSA, DS	A, AAAA, MX, CNAME, TXT, NS, SRV, CAA, PTR, SPF, ALIAS (AWS-only targets)
Pricing from	6.90 €/mo (Pro plan)	$0.50 / hosted zone / month + $0.40 per million queries (tiered)

Choose NexDNS if…

Your traffic volume makes per-query billing unpredictable
You want ALIAS records that resolve to any hostname, not just AWS targets
You’re running ISPmanager / DNSmanager workflows
You want DNS-as-Code via OctoDNS or a plain CLI, not through AWS IAM policies
You prefer EU-hosted nameservers without going through AWS regional pricing

Choose Route 53 if…

Your origin is entirely on AWS and you want alias routing to ELB / CloudFront / S3
You need latency-based or geolocation routing tightly integrated with AWS regions
You’ve already centralised on AWS IAM and want DNS under the same access model

Migrating from Route 53

Export each hosted zone with aws route53 list-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id Z… (or via the AWS Console → Export), convert to BIND format if needed, and import into NexDNS. Alias records to AWS targets need to be re-created as CNAME or ALIAS records pointing at the resolved hostname. The OctoDNS provider octodns-route53 + octodns-nexdns can do multi-zone migration as a single sync operation.

Zone import guide Bulk import via CLI →

Frequently Asked Questions

The most common questions, answered.

Browse documentation

: Route 53 starts at $0.50 per hosted zone per month plus $0.40 per million DNS queries. NexDNS Starter is 2.90 €/mo flat for up to 10 zones and 500 records with no per-query billing. For a site doing 10M monthly DNS queries across 5 zones, Route 53 is around $6.50/month and NexDNS Starter is 2.90 €/month – and the gap widens with query volume.
: Not with AWS-magic alias behaviour. NexDNS ALIAS resolves at query time to any hostname, including AWS endpoints, and returns their current IPs – so from the client’s perspective the result is equivalent. What it can’t do is recognise ELB target-group health or CloudFront’s CDN caching layer natively. If alias-to-AWS is central to your setup, Route 53 stays the better fit.
: NexDNS uses unicast nameservers in two independent EU locations and does not offer latency-based or geo routing. For advanced latency-steering or per-country routing, Route 53 and dedicated GeoDNS providers (NS1, DNSimple) have more mature feature sets – we don’t try to compete there.
: NexDNS includes DNSSEC on Pro plans at no per-zone extra cost. Route 53 charges for KMS key usage when DNSSEC is enabled (typically $1/key/month + key-usage fees) which can add $12+/zone/year.
: Yes – AWS services resolve DNS via standard resolvers, so NexDNS-hosted zones work identically to Route 53 from the AWS side. You lose the AWS-native alias shortcuts but gain flat pricing and ISPmanager compatibility.

Predictable DNS without the query bill

Start with NexDNS Starter – 2.90 €/mo flat rate – and move zones over as you’re ready.