S3 Event Notifications

When something happens in your S3 bucket, S3 can automatically notify other AWS services.

Think of it like a doorbell — someone uploads a file, and S3 rings the bell to let other services know.

Common Events

• S3:ObjectCreated — a new file was uploaded
• S3:ObjectRemoved — a file was deleted
• S3:ObjectRestore — a file was restored from Glacier
• S3:Replication — replication events

Key Features

• You can filter by object name pattern, for example only trigger on .jpg files
• You can create as many event rules as you need
• Events are typically delivered in seconds, but can sometimes take a minute or longer

Where Can S3 Send Notifications?

Direct Destinations

S3 can send events directly to three services:

there is no limit of one destination. You can have:

• One rule sending to SNS
• Another rule sending to SQS
• Another rule sending to Lambda
• All on the same bucket, all triggering at the same time

The only thing that changes per rule is what you filter — for example, one rule only for *.jpg files going to Lambda, and another rule for all files going to SQS.

Via Amazon EventBridge (Advanced)

S3 can also send all events to EventBridge, which then routes them to 15+ AWS services.

S3 Bucket --> EventBridge --> Lambda
                          --> SNS
                          --> SQS
                          --> Kinesis
                          --> Step Functions
                          --> and more...

EventBridge gives you: