AWS Bedrock Error: The Provided Model Identifier Is Not Valid

- January 18, 2026

AWS Bedrock Error: The Provided Model Identifier Is Not Valid

A diagnostic guide for fixing invalid model IDs and the common "Geography vs. Inventory" confusion.

Problem

You attempt to invoke a foundation model in AWS Bedrock and receive an error similar to:

ValidationException: The provided model identifier is not valid for this region

ResourceNotFoundException: Could not resolve the foundation model

The request fails immediately.

Clarifying the Issue

This is a Geography vs. Inventory problem.

Unlike S3 or Lambda, which are available almost everywhere, Bedrock foundation models are strictly segmented by region.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet might be in us-east-1 but not us-east-2.
Titan Embeddings might be in us-west-2 but not eu-central-1.

If your SDK is pointing to a region where that specific model is not hosted, Bedrock returns this error. It is not an IAM issue; it is an availability issue.

Why It Matters

This error frequently breaks deployments when moving from "Sandbox" to "Production."

You developed in us-east-1 (N. Virginia) because it has everything.
You deployed to us-east-2 (Ohio) for compliance or latency.
Crash: The model you built your app around doesn't exist in Ohio.

Key Terms

Model ID: The unique string identifying the model (e.g., anthropic.claude-3-sonnet...).
Region Support: The specific list of AWS regions where a model is hosted.
Inference Profile: A feature allowing cross-region routing (e.g., us.anthropic...), often used to solve this.

Steps at a Glance

Identify your current region.
Verify model availability for that region.
Option A: Change your region (Easiest).
Option B: Change your model (Hardest).
Validate with CLI.

Detailed Steps

1. Identify Your Current Region

Do not guess. Your local config, environment variables, or code might be setting this differently than you think.

Check the active CLI region:

aws configure get region

Check your code (Python example):

client = boto3.client("bedrock-runtime", region_name="us-east-1") # Explicit?
# OR
client = boto3.client("bedrock-runtime") # Implicit/Default?

2. Verify Model Availability

You need to confirm if your desired model actually exists in your active region.

The Fast Way (AWS CLI):
List all models available in your current region.

aws bedrock list-foundation-models \
  --by-provider anthropic \
  --query "modelSummaries[*].modelId"

If your model ID is not in this list, it is not available in this region.

The Visual Way (Console):

Go to the AWS Console.
Look at the Region Dropdown (top right) and ensure it matches your CLI/Code.
Go to Bedrock → Model access.
Search for your model. If it is missing or grayed out, it is not there.

3. Solution A: Change Your Region (Recommended)

If you must use that specific model (e.g., Claude 3.5 Sonnet), you must point your client to a region that supports it.

For CLI: Run aws configure and set region to us-east-1 or us-west-2.
For SDKs:

# Force the client to a supported region
client = boto3.client("bedrock-runtime", region_name="us-west-2")

📌 Note: This may add slight latency if your Lambda is in Ohio and Bedrock is in Oregon, but it is often the only way to unblock development.

4. Solution B: Change Your Model (Fallback)

If you are legally bound to a specific region (e.g., GDPR in Frankfurt) and the model isn't there, you must switch to a model that is supported.

Run the list-foundation-models command from Step 2.
Pick an available alternative (e.g., switching from Claude 3 Opus to Claude 3 Sonnet).
Update your code's modelId.

5. Validate with AWS CLI

Prove the region/model pair works before updating code. Ensure your JSON body matches the model family.

For Anthropic Claude:

aws bedrock-runtime invoke-model \
  --region us-west-2 \
  --model-id anthropic.claude-3-sonnet-20240229-v1:0 \
  --body '{"anthropic_version":"bedrock-2023-05-31","max_tokens":10,"messages":[{"role":"user","content":[{"type":"text","text":"Hi"}]}]}' \
  output.json

For Amazon Titan:

aws bedrock-runtime invoke-model \
  --region us-west-2 \
  --model-id amazon.titan-text-express-v1 \
  --body '{"inputText":"Hello"}' \
  output.json

Troubleshooting Matrix:

✅ Works: The Region and Model ID are compatible.
❌ ValidationException: Region is correct, but Model ID is wrong/missing.
❌ EndpointConnectionError: The Region itself might be invalid or unreachable.

Pro Tips

Cross-Region Inference: AWS recently launched "Inference Profiles" (e.g., us.anthropic.claude-3-5-sonnet...). This allows you to call a single ID, and AWS routes it to us-east-1 or us-west-2 automatically. This is the modern fix for availability issues.
The "Global" Trap: Bedrock is not a global service. Just because your console says "Global" in IAM does not mean Bedrock works everywhere.
GovCloud: Support in GovCloud regions lags significantly behind commercial regions.

Conclusion

If the model isn't in the region, no amount of retries will fix it.

You must either move the request (change region) or change the request (different model). Using list-foundation-models is the quickest source of truth to stop guessing and start building.

Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of Think Like a Genius.

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