Removing a member account from an organization with AWS Organizations

Removing a member account does not close the account, instead it removes the member account from the organization. The former member account becomes a standalone AWS account that is no longer managed by AWS Organizations.

Afterwards, the account is no longer subject to any policies and is responsible for its own bill payments. The organization's management account is no longer charged for any expenses accrued by the account after it's been removed from the organization.

Considerations

IAM access roles created by the management account are not automatically deleted

When you remove a member account from the organization, any IAM role that was created to enable access by the organization's management account isn't automatically deleted. If you want to terminate this access from the former organization's management account, then you must manually delete the IAM role. For information about how to delete a role, see Deleting roles or instance profiles in the IAM User Guide.

You can remove an account from your organization only if the account has the information that is required for it to operate as a standalone account

You can remove an account from your organization only if the account has the information that is required for it to operate as a standalone account. When you create an account in an organization using the AWS Organizations console, API, or AWS CLI commands, all the information that is required of standalone accounts is not automatically collected.

For each account that you want to make standalone, you must choose a support plan, provide and verify the required contact information, and provide a current payment method. AWS uses the payment method to charge for any billable (not AWS Free Tier) AWS activity that occurs while the account isn't attached to an organization. To remove an account that doesn't yet have this information, follow the steps in Leaving an organization from a member account with AWS Organizations.

You must wait until at least seven days after the account was created

To remove an account that you created in the organization, you must wait until at least seven days after the account was created. Invited accounts aren't subject to this waiting period.

The owner of the account that leaves becomes responsible for all new costs accrued

At the moment the account successfully leaves the organization, the owner of the AWS account becomes responsible for all new AWS costs accrued, and the account's payment method is used. The management account of the organization is no longer responsible.

The account cannot be a delegated administrator account for any AWS service enabled for the organization

The account that you want to remove must not be a delegated administrator account for any AWS service enabled for your organization. If the account is a delegated administrator, you must first change the delegated administrator account to another account that is remaining in the organization. For more information about how to disable or change the delegated administrator account for an AWS service, see the documentation for that service.

The account no longer has access to cost and usage data

When a member account leaves an organization, that account no longer has access to cost and usage data from the time range when the account was a member of the organization. However, the management account of the organization can still access the data. If the account rejoins the organization, the account can access that data again.

Tags attached to the account are deleted

When a member account leaves an organization, all tags attached to the account are deleted.

Principals in the account are no longer affected by any organization policies

The principals in the account are no longer affected by any policies that applied in the organization. This means that restrictions imposed by SCPs are gone, and the users and roles in the account might have more permissions than they had before. Other organization policy types can no longer be enforced or processed.

The account is no longer be covered by organization agreements

If a member account is removed from an organization, that member account will no longer be covered by organization agreements. Management account administrators should communicate this to member accounts before removing member accounts from the organization, so that member accounts can put new agreements in place if necessary. A list of active organization agreements can be viewed in the AWS Artifact console on the AWS Artifact Organization Agreements page.

Integration with other services might be disabled

Integration with other services might be disabled. If you remove an account from an organization that has integration with an AWS service enabled, the users in that account can no longer use that service.

Remove a member account from an organization

When you sign in to the organization's management account, you can remove member accounts from the organization that you no longer need. To do this, complete the following procedure. This procedure applies only to member accounts. To remove the management account, you must delete the organization.

Minimum permissions

To remove one or more member accounts from your organization, you must sign in as a user or role in the management account with the following permissions:

• organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console

• organizations:RemoveAccountFromOrganization

If you choose to sign in as a user or role in a member account in step 5, then that user or role must have the following permissions:

• organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console.

• organizations:LeaveOrganization – Note that the organization administrator can apply a policy to your account that removes this permission, preventing you from removing your account from the organization.

• If you sign in as an IAM user and the account is missing payment information, the user must have either aws-portal:ModifyBilling and aws-portal:ModifyPaymentMethods permissions (if the account has not yet migrated to fine-grained permissions) OR payments:CreatePaymentInstrument and payments:UpdatePaymentPreferences permissions (if the account has migrated to fine-grained permissions). Also, the member account must have IAM user access to billing enabled. If this isn't already enabled, see Activating Access to the Billing and Cost Management Console in the AWS Billing User Guide.

AWS Management Console

To remove a member account from your organization

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the AWS accounts page, find and choose the check box next to each member account that you want to remove from your organization. You can navigate the OU hierarchy or enable View AWS accounts only to see a flat list of accounts without the OU structure. If you have a lot of accounts, you might have to choose Load more accounts in 'ou-name' at the bottom of the list to find all of those you want to move.

   On the AWS accounts page, find and choose the name of the member account that you want to remove from your organization. You might have to expand OUs (choose the ) to find the account that you want.

3. Choose Actions, then under AWS account, choose Remove from organization.

4. In the Remove account 'account-name' (#account-id-num) from organization? dialog box, choose Remove account.

5. If AWS Organizations fails to remove one or more of the accounts, it's typically because you have not provided all the required information for the account to operate as a standalone account. Perform the following steps:

   1. Sign in to the failed accounts. We recommend that you sign in to the member account by choosing Copy link, and then pasting it into the address bar of a new incognito browser window. If you do not see Copy link, use this link to go the Sign up for AWS page and complete the missing registration steps. If you don't use an incognito window, you're signed out of the management account and won't be able to navigate back to this dialog box.

   2. The browser takes you directly to the sign-up process to complete any steps that are missing for this account. Complete all the steps presented. They might include the following:

      • Provide contact information

      • Provide a valid payment method

      • Verify the phone number

      • Select a support plan option

   3. After you complete the last sign-up step, AWS automatically redirects your browser to the AWS Organizations console for the member account. Choose Leave organization, and then confirm your choice in the confirmation dialog box. You are redirected to the Getting Started page of the AWS Organizations console, where you can view any pending invitations for your account to join other organizations.

   4. Remove the IAM roles that grant access to your account from the organization.

      Important

      If your account was created in the organization, then Organizations automatically created an IAM role in the account that enabled access by the organization's management account. If the account was invited to join, then Organizations did not automatically create such a role, but you or another administrator might have created one to get the same benefits. In either case, when you remove the account from the organization, any such role isn't automatically deleted. If you want to terminate this access from the former organization's management account, then you must manually delete this IAM role. For information about how to delete a role, see Deleting roles or instance profiles in the IAM User Guide.

AWS CLI & AWS SDKs

To remove a member account from your organization

You can use one of the following commands to remove a member account:

• AWS CLI: remove-account-from-organization

  $ aws organizations remove-account-from-organization \
      --account-id 123456789012

  This command produces no output when successful.

• AWS SDKs: RemoveAccountFromOrganization

After the member account has been removed from the organization, make sure to remove the IAM roles that grant access to your account from the organization.

Important

If your account was created in the organization, then Organizations automatically created an IAM role in the account that enabled access by the organization's management account. If the account was invited to join, then Organizations did not automatically create such a role, but you or another administrator might have created one to get the same benefits. In either case, when you remove the account from the organization, any such role isn't automatically deleted. If you want to terminate this access from the former organization's management account, then you must manually delete this IAM role. For information about how to delete a role, see Deleting roles or instance profiles in the IAM User Guide.

Member accounts can remove themselves with leave-organization instead. For more information, see Leaving an organization from a member account with AWS Organizations.