# Disabled retry policies in EventBridge | Cloud Efficiency Hub Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/disabled-retry-policies-in-eventbridge By default, EventBridge retries delivering an event to a target for up to 24 hours and up to 185 times when targets like Lambda functions or Step... By: Jarred Clore Updated: 2026-09-28 [Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) # Disabled Retry Policies in EventBridge The short version By default, EventBridge retries delivering an event to a target for up to 24 hours and up to 185 times when targets like Lambda functions or Step Functions fail with retriable errors. [Jarred Clore](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarred-clore/) Cloud FinOps Delivery Leader @ Cisco AWS service [AWS EventBridge](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/cloud-services/aws-eventbridge) Category [Other](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/other) Reference CER-0170 Type Inefficient Configuration ## Explanation Why the waste happens and who it affects. However, if a target's retry policy is set to 0 attempts or a very short maximum event age and no dead-letter queue is configured, failed deliveries are silently dropped. A successful PutEvents call only confirms that the event was accepted by the bus, so publishers never learn that delivery failed. Teams then build external replay or republish logic to compensate, which sends the same event multiple times. This leads to: - Duplicate event publishing and delivery - Unnecessary compute triggered by repeated events - Increased EventBridge, downstream service, and data transfer costs This behavior is especially problematic in systems where idempotency is not strictly enforced and retries are managed externally by upstream services. ## Billing model The pricing dimensions that drive this cost. On the classic event bus, custom and partner events are billed per event when they are published (each 64 KB chunk of a payload counts as one event), while AWS management events are ingested for free. Delivery to targets in the same account is free, so EventBridge's own retry attempts are not billed as new events. Each duplicate that an upstream service republishes is billed again as a new event, and every repeated delivery also triggers downstream compute. On the enhanced Custom event bus, pricing is per GB of ingress and egress, and retried deliveries add egress charges. ## How to detect 5 checks to find it in your estate. - Review whether retry policies are explicitly disabled or shortened on EventBridge rule targets - Check event bus logs or metrics for repeated identical events over short intervals - Identify downstream targets receiving multiple identical invocations for the same source event - Assess whether upstream services are implementing manual retry logic due to undelivered events - Evaluate whether duplicate events align with downstream failures or outages ## How to fix 4 ways to remove the waste. - Restore or tune the retry policy (maximum retry attempts and maximum event age) on each rule target, and attach a dead-letter queue to the target, to reduce reliance on external retry logic - Confirm downstream targets are configured with error handling (e.g., DLQs, retry settings) - Audit event patterns for high duplication rates and correlate with retry settings - Consider using EventBridge archive and replay for reliable reprocessing when retries are disabled ## Documentation Vendor references for pricing and configuration. - [Amazon EventBridge quotas docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/eb-quota.html) - [How EventBridge retries delivering events docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/eb-rule-retry-policy.html) - [Using dead-letter queues to process undelivered events in EventBridge docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/eb-rule-dlq.html) - [Best practices when defining rules in Amazon EventBridge docs.aws.amazon.com](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/eb-rules-best-practices.html) - [Amazon EventBridge pricing aws.amazon.com](https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/pricing/) ## Related inefficiencies [Browse the library](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) - AWS CloudWatch CER-0224 ### [Suboptimal Log Class Configuration in CloudWatch](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/suboptimal-log-class-configuration-in-cloudwatch) By default, CloudWatch Log Groups use the Standard log class, which has a higher per-GB ingestion price. AWS also offers an Infrequent Access (IA) log class designed for logs that are rarely queried - such as audit trails, debugging... Other - AWS CloudTrail CER-0016 ### [Duplicate or Overlapping AWS CloudTrail Trails](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/duplicate-or-overlapping-aws-cloudtrail-trails) AWS CloudTrail enables event logging across AWS services, but when multiple trails are configured to log overlapping events - especially data events - it can result in redundant charges and unnecessary storage or ingestion costs. This... Other - AWS CloudWatch CER-0090 ### [Excessive CloudWatch Log Volume from Persistently Enabled Debugging](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/excessive-cloudwatch-log-volume-from-persistently-enabled-debugging) Engineers often enable verbose logging (e.g., debug or trace-level) during development or troubleshooting, then forget to disable it after deployment. This results in elevated log ingestion rates - and therefore costs - even when the... Other --- Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.