TheArchitect / templates

AWS architecture templates

42 free, real-world AWS architectures — from a 3-tier web app to multi-region disaster recovery. Each one opens in TheArchitect, where you can change it, see the estimated monthly cost, and export the CloudFormation or Terraform that builds it.

• 3-Tier Web App

  CDN → Load Balancer → EC2 → RDS + S3

  6 AWS services · 36 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Serverless API

  API Gateway → Lambda → DynamoDB + SNS

  6 AWS services · 8 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Kubernetes Cluster

  EKS control plane with VPC, IAM role, private endpoint, and CloudWatch logging

  3 AWS services · 31 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Data Pipeline

  S3 trigger → Lambda → DynamoDB + SQS + CloudWatch

  6 AWS services · 8 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Twitter/X Scale Test

  CloudFront behavior split, API Gateway VPC Link, public/internal ALBs, private app/data subnets, queues, media, and data stores

  15 AWS services · 52 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• HA Web App

  SAA-C03: CloudFront + WAF → ALB → Auto Scaling EC2 fleet → RDS + ElastiCache

  7 AWS services · 39 CloudFormation resources

• Serverless Event Processing

  SAA-C03: WAF + API Gateway → Lambda → SQS → Lambda Worker → DynamoDB + SNS

  7 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• EKS Microservices

  SAA-C03: CloudFront → ALB → EKS control plane → Aurora + ElastiCache

  6 AWS services · 36 CloudFormation resources

• Hybrid Connectivity

  SAA-C03: Direct Connect → private VPC → EC2 + RDS (on-premises extension)

  3 AWS services · 18 CloudFormation resources

• Data Lake

  SAA-C03: S3 raw zone + KMS encryption → Athena WorkGroup → S3 processed zone

  5 AWS services · 6 CloudFormation resources

• Streaming Analytics

  SAA-C03: Kinesis Data Stream → Lambda → S3 archive + DynamoDB + CloudWatch

  6 AWS services · 7 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Multi-Region DR

  SAA-C03: Route 53 failover → CloudFront → ALB → Auto Scaling EC2 → Aurora Global

  6 AWS services · 35 CloudFormation resources

• Security Baseline

  SAA-C03: WAF + KMS + Secrets Manager + CloudTrail → S3 + CloudWatch + SNS

  8 AWS services · 8 CloudFormation resources

• Aurora Global

  SAA-C03: Route 53 → ALB → Fargate → Aurora global cluster + CloudWatch

  6 AWS services · 35 CloudFormation resources

• Redshift Data Warehouse

  SAA-C03: Kinesis → Lambda ETL → S3 staging → Redshift + Athena federated query

  7 AWS services · 8 CloudFormation resources

• CloudTrail Audit

  SAA-C03: CloudTrail multi-region logging → S3 + KMS + CloudWatch + SNS alerts

  6 AWS services · 6 CloudFormation resources

• Auto Scaling Web Tier

  SAA-C03: ALB → Auto Scaling EC2 fleet + EBS volumes → RDS + ElastiCache

  6 AWS services · 38 CloudFormation resources

• Step Functions Orchestration

  SAA-C03: API Gateway → Step Functions → Lambda tasks + SQS + DynamoDB + SNS

  7 AWS services · 9 CloudFormation resources

• Cost Optimization

  SAA-C03: CloudWatch budget alarm → Lambda optimiser → Auto Scaling (Spot) + EC2 + S3 (lifecycle) + RDS (right-sized)

  6 AWS services · 7 CloudFormation resources

• ElastiCache Caching Layer

  SAA-C03: API Gateway → Lambda → ElastiCache Redis + RDS (cache-aside pattern)

  6 AWS services · 38 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Static Website (S3 + CloudFront + Route53)

  SAA-C03: S3 origin → CloudFront CDN → Route53 DNS alias. WAF edge protection, OAC enforces private bucket.

  5 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources

• Serverless REST API (API GW + Lambda + DynamoDB)

  SAA-C03: API Gateway → Lambda business logic → DynamoDB NoSQL table. IAM execution role, CloudWatch error alarm.

  5 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• SNS Fan-Out (SNS → SQS × 2 → Lambda)

  SAA-C03: SNS topic fans out to two SQS queues, each driving an independent Lambda worker — decoupled pub/sub pattern.

  4 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• RDS Multi-AZ + Read Replica

  SAA-C03: Multi-AZ RDS primary for HA, a read replica for read-scale, CloudWatch lag alarm, and enhanced monitoring role.

  3 AWS services · 4 CloudFormation resources

• Blue/Green Deployment (ALB + Route53 Weighted)

  SAA-C03: Two ALB+ASG stacks (Blue=active, Green=standby). Route53 weighted records swap traffic with zero downtime.

  4 AWS services · 7 CloudFormation resources

• Scheduled Lambda (EventBridge Cron)

  SAA-C03: CloudWatch Events/EventBridge rule fires on a cron schedule → Lambda. Decoupled periodic job with DLQ for failed invocations.

  5 AWS services · 7 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• HTTP API Gateway (cost-optimised serverless)

  HTTP API is ~70 % cheaper than REST API ($1.00 vs $3.50 per million calls). Use for simple Lambda proxy integrations without usage plans or API keys.

  5 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• NAT Instance (cheap NAT for dev/test)

  A t3.nano EC2 NAT instance costs ~$3.80/mo vs NAT Gateway ~$32+/mo. Valid for dev/test VPCs with low egress. Not HA — use NAT Gateway for production.

  2 AWS services · 33 CloudFormation resources

• S3 + Athena Analytics (no-warehouse)

  Athena queries S3 directly at $5/TB scanned — no cluster to provision. 10–100× cheaper than Redshift for infrequent or ad-hoc analytics workloads.

  5 AWS services · 6 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Aurora Serverless v2 (auto-scaling DB)

  Aurora Serverless v2 scales from 0.5 to 128 ACUs in seconds. Ideal for dev/test, spiky workloads, or multi-tenant apps. No idle cost at minimum capacity.

  5 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources

• Spot Batch Processing (up to 90 % savings)

  SQS-driven Auto Scaling Group of Spot EC2 workers. Scale-in on empty queue, handle Spot interruptions via SQS visibility timeout re-queue.

  5 AWS services · 6 CloudFormation resources

• CloudFront Edge Auth (Functions vs Lambda@Edge)

  CloudFront Functions cost 1/6th of Lambda@Edge for simple header manipulation, URL rewrites, and JWT validation at the edge. Lambda@Edge reserved for heavy compute.

  5 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources

• S3 Intelligent-Tiering & Lifecycle Archive

  Full S3 storage cost optimisation: Intelligent-Tiering for unknown access patterns, lifecycle rules cascade to Glacier and Deep Archive — up to 95 % storage cost reduction.

  4 AWS services · 5 CloudFormation resources · deploy-ready

• Fargate Spot Containers (70 % cheaper)

  ECS with FARGATE_SPOT capacity provider — up to 70 % savings over on-demand Fargate. SQS-driven task scaling with graceful SIGTERM handling for Spot interruptions.

  6 AWS services · 6 CloudFormation resources

• Real-Time Game Leaderboard

  Sub-millisecond leaderboard reads via ElastiCache Redis sorted sets backed by DynamoDB for durable score storage.

  6 AWS services · 7 CloudFormation resources

• IoT Fleet Telemetry Pipeline

  Kinesis stream ingests device telemetry with three parallel Lambda consumers: anomaly detection, device shadow updates, and cold-path S3 archival for Athena analytics.

  8 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources

• ML Inference + Feature Store

  Serverless ML serving with a dual feature store: Redis for low-latency online features and S3 for offline training set assembly via Athena.

  9 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources

• Media Transcode Pipeline

  S3 upload triggers a Lambda dispatcher that enqueues SQS jobs consumed by auto-scaled Fargate workers. Renditions are served via CloudFront.

  10 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources

• FIFO Payments Ledger

  Exactly-once payment processing with FIFO SQS deduplication, conditional DynamoDB writes for idempotency, CMK encryption, and a DLQ alert path.

  9 AWS services · 13 CloudFormation resources

• CQRS + Event Sourcing

  Command and Query Responsibility Segregation with DynamoDB Streams as the event bus. Commands append immutable events; a projector builds a denormalised read model.

  7 AWS services · 12 CloudFormation resources

• Centralised Log Analytics

  CloudWatch subscription filters stream application logs through Kinesis into a Lambda transformer that writes partitioned Parquet to S3 for Athena investigation.

  8 AWS services · 12 CloudFormation resources

• Secrets Rotation & Compliance Audit

  Zero hardcoded credentials: EC2 fetches DB credentials from Secrets Manager with automatic 30-day rotation. CloudTrail captures every API call to an immutable S3 audit bucket.

  9 AWS services · 9 CloudFormation resources