Amazon Web Services has introduced a new planning tool designed to assist companies in the regional expansion of their cloud infrastructure. For the first time, AWS Capabilities by Region allows for a detailed comparison of the availability of services, features, APIs, and CloudFormation resources across different regions.
The tool is primarily aimed at companies expanding their cloud infrastructure globally, needing to meet compliance requirements, or planning disaster recovery scenarios. Previously, developers and cloud architects had to manually research the regional availability of services – a time-consuming process that often led to project delays.
AWS Capabilities by Region is accessible via the AWS Builder Center and offers an interactive interface for comparing multiple regi…
Amazon Web Services has introduced a new planning tool designed to assist companies in the regional expansion of their cloud infrastructure. For the first time, AWS Capabilities by Region allows for a detailed comparison of the availability of services, features, APIs, and CloudFormation resources across different regions.
The tool is primarily aimed at companies expanding their cloud infrastructure globally, needing to meet compliance requirements, or planning disaster recovery scenarios. Previously, developers and cloud architects had to manually research the regional availability of services – a time-consuming process that often led to project delays.
AWS Capabilities by Region is accessible via the AWS Builder Center and offers an interactive interface for comparing multiple regions. Users can specifically search for services and receive an overview of four possible availability statuses: “Available” for services already available, “Planning” for services in the evaluation phase, “Not Expanding” for services that Amazon will not launch in the region, and specific quarterly indications like “2026 Q1” for planned launches.
The “Show only common features” function is particularly relevant for companies in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland): It filters out only those AWS offerings that are available in all selected regions. This simplifies the planning of architectures that need to comply with data sovereignty and GDPR requirements.
From API Operations to EC2 Instance Types
However, the tool goes beyond a mere service overview: Users can check the availability of individual API operations – for example, for DynamoDB or API Gateway. Additionally, CloudFormation resource types can be searched by service, type, property, and config. This is particularly practical when writing Infrastructure-as-Code templates, as it allows checking whether AWS supports specific resources in the target regions before development.
The availability of specific EC2 instance types is also retrievable – including Graviton-based, GPU-accelerated, or memory-optimized variants. AWS provides an example of searching for seventh-generation compute-optimized Metal instances: Users can thus check, for instance, whether c7i.metal-24xl and c7i.metal-48xl are available in the desired regions.
Automation via MCP Servers
In addition to the web interface, AWS also provides the data via the AWS Knowledge MCP Server. It serves to automate region planning and can generate AI-powered recommendations for region and service selection. Furthermore, regional capability checks can be directly integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
The MCP server is free to use and does not require an AWS account, but it is subject to rate limits. The documentation provides setup instructions. AWS accepts feedback on the tool via the Builder Support page. More information on AWS Capabilities by Region can be found in the blog post about the tool.
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This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.