Stats

The whole archive in numbers: how often AWS changes its managed policies, when, and which ones.

Policy Creation by Year

Number of AWS managed policies first tracked each year

176
20
143
21
119
22
150
23
154
24
135
25
147
26
20201,024 total policies2026

Largest Policy

4533 actions

AWSSupportServiceRolePoli...

AWS Services Tracked

449

IAM service namespaces over time

IAM Actions (literals)

15,703

Distinct action strings in managed policies (no wildcards)

Year-over-Year Velocity

Total policy commits per year - new launches vs. updates

629 total (176 new, 453 updates)
20
488 total (143 new, 345 updates)
21
552 total (119 new, 433 updates)
22
669 total (150 new, 519 updates)
23
606 total (154 new, 452 updates)
24
753 total (135 new, 618 updates)
25
680 total (147 new, 533 updates)
26
UpdatesNew launches4,377 total commits tracked

Excludes 4 bulk-reformat day(s) where detection logic changes caused false-positive diffs.

Policy Lifecycle

Current version distribution across all policies

v1
660
v2
256
v3
185
v4
118
v5
69
v6-10
237
v11-20
93
v21+
41

40% of policies (660) are still at v1 - created once and never updated.

Monthly Seasonality

Policy change volume by calendar month across all years

257
Jan
277
Feb
326
Mar
368
Apr
326
May
392
Jun
377
Jul
399
Aug
355
Sep
316
Oct
634
Nov
350
Dec
re:Invent season (Nov-Dec) - 35% above average

re:Invent Pulse

Policy changes during the Nov 15 - Dec 15 window each year

100 changes, 50 new
20
107 changes, 34 new
21
87 changes, 29 new
22
129 changes, 25 new
23
138 changes, 59 new
24
145 changes, 33 new
25
UpdatesNew launches