AWS Control Tower sets up and governs multi-account AWS environments, automating landing zone setup for new or existing AWS Organizations. AWS says setup can establish a well-architected environment in under 30 minutes. Landing zones coordinate account structure, identity, federated access, and central backup integrations. Account Factory provisions accounts from configurable templates and supports custom resources and requirements. The Control Catalog contains more than 750 managed controls for security, cost, durability, and operations, and can be used without a full landing zone. Controls can be detective, preventive, or proactive; proactive controls use AWS CloudFormation Hooks to identify and block noncompliant deployments. Predefined integrations include AWS Organizations, IAM Identity Center, AWS Config, AWS Backup, and AWS CloudTrail, and an API is available. AWS describes the service for organizations that centrally govern multiple AWS accounts. There is no additional charge for Control Tower itself, but underlying AWS services are billed by usage, and optional controls or configured resources may add costs. The landing zone’s home Region cannot be changed after creation, and some controls do not work in every supported Region.
Who it is for
It is designed for organizations managing multiple AWS accounts that need centralized governance and automated policy enforcement. It may also suit teams that want to use the Control Catalog without deploying a full landing zone.
What is good
- Account Factory provisions accounts from configurable templates.
- Catalog offers more than 750 managed controls.
- Proactive controls can block noncompliant deployments.
- Control Tower has no additional charge.
What to know first
- Underlying AWS services are billed by usage.
- Optional controls or configured resources may add costs.
- Landing zone home Region cannot be changed after creation.
- Some controls are unavailable in some supported Regions.
Verdict
AWS Control Tower centralizes account setup and policy controls for multi-account AWS environments. Its own charge is zero, but related service usage and selected resources can incur costs; account for the fixed home Region as well.
AWS Control Tower plans and pricing
All plansCompared on cloud governance software
- Free plan
- Yes
- Cloud coverage
- single-cloud
- Policy as code
- Yes
- Compliance frameworks
- Yes
- Drift detection
- Yes
- Approval workflows
- Yes
