Avoiding unexpected charges after Free Tier - AWS Billing

Avoiding unexpected charges after Free Tier

Your eligibility for the 12 month free service offering AWS Free Tier expires 12 months after you first activate your AWS account. You can’t extend your Free Tier eligibility after this time.

Note

You can continue to use Always Free offers, even after your AWS Free Tier eligibility expires. To learn more about available Always Free offers, see AWS Free Tier.

As the expiration date of your AWS Free Tier eligibility approaches, we recommend that you shut down or delete any resources that you don't need. After your eligibility expires, you’re charged at the standard AWS billing rates for usage.

For short-term trials, there are no expiration notification for these services. You will receive free tier alerts during the trial period only. To avoid unexpected costs in a short-term trial, you must turn off these resources before the end of the trial period.

Even if you aren’t regularly signing in to your account, you might have active resources running. Use the following procedure to identify your account’s active resources.

Note

You can also use the GetFreeTierUsage API operation to get your free tier usage. For more information about the Free Tier API, see the AWS Billing and Cost Management API Reference.

To identify your active resources by using AWS Billing

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Billing console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/.

  2. On the navigation pane, choose Bills .

  3. On the Charges by service tab, choose Expand all.

  4. Review the list to find the services with active resources and by AWS Region, and the charges for each resource.

To identify your active resources by using AWS Cost Explorer

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Cost Management at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/home.

  2. On the navigation pane, choose Cost Explorer.

  3. On the Cost and usage graph, note the services and AWS Regions with resources that you don't need. For instructions on how to shut down or delete those resources, see the documentation for that service.

    For example, to terminate an Amazon EC2 Linux instance, see the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Tip

You might decide to close your AWS account. For more information and important considerations, see Close your account in the AWS Account Management Reference Guide.