Enabling Model Access: The manual step

Even if you have Admin permissions in AWS, you cannot use Bedrock models until you manually "Accept" the terms of use for each model provider (like Anthropic, Meta, or Cohere).

1. The Model Access Menu

1. Log into the AWS Console.
2. Search for Bedrock.
3. On the left sidebar, scroll down to Model access.
4. Click Edit.
5. Check the boxes for the models you want (e.g., Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Llama 3).
6. Click Save changes.

Note: This process can take a few minutes to several hours depending on the provider. Claude is usually instant.

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2. Choosing the Right Region

Model availability varies by region.

• US-East-1 (N. Virginia): Usually has the newest models first.
• US-West-2 (Oregon): High availability and the second-best model selection.
• EU-Central-1 (Frankfurt): Best for GDPR compliance.

If you don't see a model in the "Model Access" list, try switching your AWS Console region to us-east-1.

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3. Visualizing Regional Latency

graph TD
    User[Developer in London] -->|Prompt| US[US-East-1 Server]
    User -->|Prompt| EU[EU-Central-1 Server]
    US -->|Model Logic| US_Out[Response]
    EU -->|Model Logic| EU_Out[Response]
    
    US -.->|Higher Latency| User
    EU -.->|Lower Latency| User

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💡 Guidance for Learners

Most organizations start in us-east-1 for development to get access to "Sonnet 3.5" and "Llama 3 70B" immediately. When you move to production, you might switch to a closer region to reduce Latency (time between request and response).

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Summary

• You must manually enable models in the console.
• Permissions (IAM) and Access (Console) are two different layers.
• Region choice affects which models are available to you.
• Check the Amazon Bedrock Pricing page for per-token costs in your selected region.