Claude Platform on AWS vs. Bedrock: A Decision Tree

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

"Use Bedrock" was a one-line answer six months ago. As of May 11, 2026, it's not. Anthropic and AWS shipped Claude Platform on AWS to general availability — Anthropic's native developer platform, accessed through your AWS account, billed through AWS Marketplace, and operated by Anthropic outside the AWS security boundary.

There are now three ways to run Claude when AWS is anywhere in the picture:

Amazon Bedrock — AWS operates inference; AWS is the data processor.
Claude Platform on AWS — Anthropic operates inference; Anthropic and AWS are independent data processors. Auth, billing, and audit go through AWS-native plumbing.
Claude Platform direct (claude.com) — Anthropic everything. AWS is not in the loop.

The choice has real architectural implications: feature availability, who holds your data, what your CloudTrail trail actually records, whether HIPAA workloads can run there, and whether your AWS EDP commit can absorb the spend. Pick wrong and you'll either re-platform when a beta you need only exists on one path, or re-architect when an auditor asks why model inference is leaving the AWS security boundary.

Claude Platform on AWS on The road

Claude Platform on AWS vs. Bedrock: A Decision Tree