[NathanKP]

AWS engineer from the container services team here. One small point of clarification on "AppRunner charges for deploys": We only charge for deploys if you are using App Runner's built-in integration to watch your repo, and automatically build/rebuild your container image from source code.

This is not a required feature for App Runner to function though. For example if you are using Copilot with App Runner you can drive the build and release to App Runner from your local dev machine, so there is no extra deployment charge beyond what it costs you for electricity to build your container on your own laptop. You only get charged for App Runner deployment automation when you are using AppRunner as a Github Actions / Jenkins replacement to do the Docker image build on the server side.