What do I need to know if my Free Tier period with AWS is expiring?

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1

I received an email notifying me that the Free Tier period for my account is expiring.

Resolution

When your Free Tier period with AWS expires, you can continue to use services or stop using services.

  • If you continue using AWS services, then all resources on your account are billed at On-Demand rates.
  • If you stop using AWS services, then you must take additional actions to avoid incurring charges.

Continue using AWS services

Review the resources that you're using on a monthly basis.

To view your monthly charges, do the following:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and then open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
  2. In the navigation pane, on the left hand side, choose Bills.
  3. For Date, choose a month.

Then, check the AWS Pricing for any resources that you're using to decide what to keep. If you accept that the resources on your account are billed at On-Demand rates, you don't need to take any action.

You can use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate your monthly bill when AWS Free Tier has expired.

Stop using AWS services

If you don't want to incur charges, do the following:

  1. Check for active resources.
  2. Delete, stop, or terminate the resources on your account.
  3. (Optional) If you want, you can then close your account. However, if you have no active resources or subscriptions, you can keep your account active without being billed.

Related information

AWS Free Tier FAQs

How do I view past or current AWS payments?

Avoiding unexpected charges

10 Comments

You probably don't need to send this email to people who have had no active resources and haven't logged in for over a year. I probably spent 15 minutes just confirming that I have 0 active resources to ensure I won't be charged.

ben
replied a year ago

Thank you for your comment. We'll review and update the Knowledge Center article as needed.

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied a year ago

I recently got an email that my free tier is ending soon (I activated S3 almost a year ago for a tutorial project). I logged in and removed all services and all resources from all regions. Using Tag Editor I confirmed there are no active resources on my account, but under Billing there was still S3 visible in one region. Your support pages suggest that it may take up to 24 hours for that list to update.

I checked again today to make sure I wont get charged. The Tag Editor still returns no results for active resources (All regions, all supported resource types), but now, under Billing (Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL charges by service), I see multiple services that I never selected or had visible yesterday: CodeArtifact, Data Transfer, Key Management Service, Secrets Manager, Simple Notification Service, Simple Queue Service, Simple Storage Service and Systems Manager. All of them have all available regions under them, except for S3 which has only one region (same as it was yesterday).

What is going on? Am I going to get charged for that? When I open the consoles for those services there is no items in a list so I guess they are not active afterall??? I have no experience with AWS, and this is just confusing. Can someone please explain what is going on?

replied a year ago

I have multiple services in use. How do i determine which one is the free one?

replied a year ago

Thank you for your comment. We'll review and update the Knowledge Center article as needed.

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied a year ago

Hello! I terminated all the services I have been using yet I received a bill due on May. It says its due EC2 and RDS but I terminated all instances of RDS and EC2 and by the way where I can seek support through email from AWS team?

wolf
replied 9 months ago

I want to continue running an existing Free-Tier resource with the 3 year uprfont rate. How can I do this without deleting the instance?

Andrew
replied 5 months ago

Thank you for your comment. We'll review and update the Knowledge Center article as needed.

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied 5 months ago

I am an IAM user with read-only permission when I go to the billing ->credits page it automatically reloads infinity

replied 5 months ago

Thank you for your comment. We'll review and update the Knowledge Center article as needed.

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied 5 months ago