How do I avoid future charges when I use the AWS Free Tier?

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I want to know how I can make sure that I'm not billed when I use the AWS Free Tier.

Short description

When you use the AWS Free Tier, you might incur charges because of the following reasons:

  • You exceeded the monthly free tier usage quota.
  • You're using an AWS service, such as Amazon Aurora, that doesn't offer free tier benefits.
  • Your free tier short-term trial expired.
  • Your free tier period expired.

To avoid future charges when you use the free tier, complete the following steps:

  1. Verify that the free tier period is active on your account.
  2. Identify the resources that generate charges.
  3. Delete, stop, or terminate any resources that generate charges.
  4. Monitor your usage to make sure that you don't exceed the free tier offers again.

Resolution

Verify that the free tier period is active on your account

Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console, and then choose Free Tier from the navigation pane.

  • If the table doesn't appear, then your AWS Free Tier period expired. You're billed at standard rates for any resources that are provisioned on your account. Delete, shut down, or terminate any resources that you don't want to keep or incur charges for.
  • If the table appears, then you see additional information about any services that you use. This table also provides a Month-to-Date (MTD) actual usage percentage.

Identify the resources that generate charges

Complete the following steps:

  1. Open the Billing and Cost Management console.
  2. In the navigation pane, choose Bills.
  3. In the Charges by service tab, expand each service to identify the AWS Regions where services incurred charges. You must terminate the resources in those Regions.
  4. To view charges for previous months, choose a previous month from the dropdown list. Note the services that have active resources for the current and previous billing periods.

Charges that are listed under a service are for usage that's not covered under the AWS Free Tier.

For more information on how to find your active Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) resources, see Why can't I find an Amazon EC2 instance that I launched on my account?

Important: AWS Free Tier benefits cover the aggregated billable total of your usage for all AWS Regions together, but not each Region individually.

Delete, stop, or terminate any resources that generate charges

After you identify the AWS resources that incur charges, delete, stop, or terminate the resources to avoid future charges.

For information on how to terminate resources that aren't covered by the free tier, see How do I terminate active resources that I no longer need on my AWS account?

Monitor your usage of AWS Free Tier resources

Related information

What is the AWS Free Tier, and how do I use it?

How do I make sure I don't incur charges when I'm using the AWS Free Tier?

AWS Free Tier FAQs

Avoiding unexpected charges

How do I close my AWS account?

AWS OFFICIAL
AWS OFFICIALUpdated 5 months ago
7 Comments

Idk how you can link an article like this and claim it as helpful, ya'll really need help.

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

Good day , how i can communicate with soport : I have a questions about free tier. Thx

Dador33
replied 10 months ago

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

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied 10 months ago

The link to "Tracking your AWS Free Tier usage" has No information about sagemaker costs, which I'm being billed for, but are using resources under the free tier. Please update the "tracking" page to list how to track sagemaker costs under the free tier and let me know why I'm being billed for free tier services that are below the free tier thresholds.

replied 9 months ago

The reference to "Billing and Cost Management console" says to review the details section. There's no "Details" section. Where am I supposed to look?

replied 9 months ago

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

profile pictureAWS
MODERATOR
replied 9 months ago