Update
The smallest provisioned throughput one can request has meanwhile been reduced to 1w/1r capacity units, see Amazon DynamoDB - Reduced Minimum Throughput for details, which specifically addresses the problem at hand:
The AWS Free Usage Tier allows you to consume up to 100 MB of DynamoDB
storage, 5 read capacity units, and 5 write capacity units per month.
As a very beneficial side effect of today's announcement, you can now
create up to 5 tables within the Free Usage Tier. [emphasis mine]
Original Answer
Since a table cannot be created below 5w/r5 capacity that would mean a
developer trying DynamoDB can only create 2 tables at max.
You are correct, as more clearly outlined in the respective FAQ entry What is the minimum throughput I can provision for a single DynamoDB table?:
The smallest provisioned throughput you can request is 5 write capacity units and 5 read capacity units.
This falls within the free tier, which allows for 5 units of write capacity and 10 units of read capacity. The free tier applies to the
account level, not the table level. A given account may create a
single table with 5 units of write capacity and 10 units of read
capacity.
The resulting one table limitation might be considered a rather significant restriction concerning the other AWS Free Usage Tier elements indeed, but on the other hand you can't handle serious real world scenarios with a single EC2 micro instance either (though technically there are two available as of recently).
The Amazon DynamoDB use cases are clearly targeting respectively advanced scenarios, thus a free tier is probably not considered a necessity outside of testing scenarios.
That would also mean that if someone had to create several tables
during development, they would have to pay about $7.50 (resp half if
only 5w is used) a month for a table that sits there and more or less
does nothing.
That's correct as well - by satisfying the advanced customer need for provisioned throughput, Amazon introduces a new pricing model, as summarized in section Throughput Reservation within the elaborate technical and business analysis Amazon DynamoDB: First Look:
This type of atomic service level provisioning is both differentiating
and compelling for certain customer types. Promising single digit
latency at a selected throughput level with zero customer effort
required is likely to be attractive for customers that require – or
think they require – a particular service level. And by requiring
customers to manually determine their required provisioning level,
Amazon stands to benefit from customer overprovisioning; customers
will feel pain if they’re under-provisioned and react, but conversely
may fail to observe that they’re over. Much like mobile carriers,
Amazon wins in both scenarios.
Again, this highlights the target market: customers with significant requirements and respectively guaranteed service level. Once you actually fall into that category, paying a small premium for an idling table eventually isn't going to be of any concern compared to the benefits of the service ;)
