Purchasing Savings Plans

You can access Savings Plans in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console, or directly by opening the AWS Cost Management console. You can add your selection to your Savings Plans cart from the Recommendations page or from the Purchase Savings Plans page. We suggest that you use the Recommendations page to see customized Savings Plans recommendations based on your past usage.

Evaluating recommended Savings Plans on your Recommendations page

You can visit your Recommendations page to see the Savings Plans that AWS recommends to help you save on eligible usage. These recommendations can be refreshed at any time to make it easy for you to purchase the optimal Savings Plans to help you save. You can directly add Savings Plans that are recommended for your account to your cart.

For more information about how to view your Recommendations page, or to learn how recommendations are calculated, see Understanding your Savings Plans recommendations.

To purchase Savings Plans from the Recommendations page

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

2. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Recommendations.

3. Refresh your Savings Plans recommendations to include recent usage and up-to-date Savings Plans inventory.

4. In the Recommendation parameters section, choose your preferred Savings Plans type, Savings Plans term, Payment option, and lookback period.

5. In the Recommended Savings Plans table, select the check boxes next to the Savings Plans that you want to purchase.

   Note

   The recommended commitment is the Savings Plans rate, and not the On-Demand spend.

6. Choose Add Savings Plans to cart.

   Note

   For member account recommendations, only the member account owner can add Savings Plans recommendations to the cart and proceed to purchase recommendations.

7. (Optional) To queue the recommended purchase for a future use, see Queuing a Savings Plan purchase.

8. To complete your purchase, choose Cart in the left pane.

9. In the Cart page, review your order and choose Submit order.

To learn more about the Cart page, see Reviewing and finalizing purchases.

Purchasing a custom commitment Savings Plan on the Purchase Savings Plans page

You can purchase a Savings Plan with a commitment amount that is different from the recommended commitment. You can use the Purchase Savings Plans page to purchase a commitment of your choice.

To purchase a Savings Plan

1. Open the AWS Cost Management console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/home.

2. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Purchase Savings Plans.

3. Under Savings Plan type, choose Compute, EC2 Instance, or SageMaker.

4. For EC2 Instance type, choose a Region and Instance family.

5. Choose Term.

6. In Hourly commitment, enter an amount.

   Note

   The Hourly commitment is the Savings Plans rate, and not the On-Demand spend.

7. Choose Payment option.

8. If you chose Partial Upfront payment, enter the Partial Upfront payment amount.

9. (Optional) To queue the Savings Plan to start on a future date, set the Start date.

10. Choose Add to cart.

11. On the Cart page, review your order, and choose Submit order.

Queuing a Savings Plan purchase on the Cart page

You can queue, or schedule, a Savings Plan purchase to occur on a future date. The date can be specific to the exact second that you want to start coverage. Any upfront or recurring fee is charged only when the queued purchase is processed on the start date you choose. You can delete this queued purchase at any time before the start date.

To queue future Savings Plan purchases

1. Open the AWS Cost Management console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/home.

2. Add your Savings Plans from the Purchase Savings Plans page or the Recommendations page.

   To learn more about this process, see Evaluating Savings Plans or Purchasing a custom commitment Savings Plan on the Purchase Savings Plans page.

3. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Cart.

4. Select your Savings Plans.

5. Choose Set start date.

6. Choose a Date and Time.

   You can queue a purchase up to three years in the future. You can also specify to the exact second. Past dates aren't applicable.

   Note

   Savings Plan purchases are processed and validated at the time of the Start date, and must pass all validations and be invoiced within the same calendar month of the Start date. Savings Plan purchases will be marked as payment-failed and will not discount any usage if the process isn't completed by the end of the month in the UTC time zone.

7. Choose Confirm.

8. (Optional) To clear the Start date, choose Set start date.

   1. Choose Remove start date.

9. Choose Submit order.

Any queued purchases will appear with the status Queued in your Account Inventory page. To delete any queued purchases before the start date, see Deleting a queued Savings Plan.

Reviewing and finalizing purchases on the Cart page

The Savings Plans Carts page keeps your commitments until you're ready to make a purchase.

To review and finalize purchases from the Cart page

1. Open the AWS Cost Management console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/home.

2. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Cart.

3. Review your order as follows:

   • Type: The type of Savings Plan. For more information, see Plan types.

   • Term: Your term commitment in years. Choose a 1-year or 3-year term.

     Note

     One year: A year is defined as 365 days (31,536,000 seconds).

     Three years: Three years is defined as 1,095 days (94,608,000 seconds).

   • Region: (Only applicable to EC2 Instance Savings Plans) The AWS Region you're committing to. For example, US East (N. Virginia).

   • Instance type: The instance family (for example, M5, C5, R5, C5d, etc.) that you are committing to (only applicable to EC2 Instance Savings Plans).

   • Purchase option: The purchase option of the commitment. Choose from All Upfront, Partial Upfront, or No Upfront.

   • Start date: The date and time when your commitment will be purchased (UTC). By default, the date is set to Now, indicating the purchase will complete as soon as you submit the order.

   • Commitment: The hourly commitment associated with your Savings Plan and term at the Savings Plan rate.

   • Upfront payment: The upfront portion of the payment you will be charged at checkout, in accordance with your selected payment option.

   • Monthly payment: The monthly charge amount for your Savings Plans. This amount is billed each month over the plan's term.

   • Total cost: The total commitment for the Savings Plans over the selected term. This includes the upfront payment and recurring monthly payments over the length of your term.

4. Review the following contents in the Summary section:

   • Total commitment: The sum of all Savings Plans costs currently in your cart, regardless of Start date and Payment option.

   • Total commitment starting now: The sum of the Upfront payment for any Savings Plan with the Start date set to Now.

5. (Optional) Remove any Savings Plan from your cart by selecting each item and choosing Remove from cart.

6. (Optional) To start over, remove all items by choosing Clear cart.

7. (Optional) Add new commitments by choosing Add another Savings Plan.

8. Choose Submit order.

If you encounter any error messages or unsuccessful attempts when you're completing your purchase, contact AWS Support. For details about how to contact, see Getting help with AWS Billing and Cost Management in the AWS Billing User Guide.

Returning a purchased Savings Plan

When you purchase a Savings Plan, you make a commitment for one or three years. However, in the case that you purchase a Savings Plan and quickly identify a purchase error that you want to rectify, you'll have a limited time period to do so. Any Savings Plan with an hourly commitment of $100 or less that has been purchased in the last seven days and in the same calendar month can be returned. Once the calendar month ends (UTC time), these purchased Savings Plans can no longer be returned.

When you return a Savings Plan, you'll receive a 100% refund for any upfront charges made towards your plan and these refunds will be reflected in your bill within 24 hours of the return. Any usage that was covered by the plan will be charged at On-Demand rates or get covered by a different Savings Plan, if applicable.

You can return a Savings Plan using the console or by calling the ReturnSavingsPlan action through the AWS SDK/CLI.

To return an active Savings Plan

1. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/costmanagement/home.

2. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Inventory.

3. Choose a Savings Plan to open the Savings Plan details page.

4. Choose Return Savings Plan.

   Note

   The Return Savings Plan button is only visible in the details page when a Savings Plan is eligible for return.

5. In the Return Savings Plan dialog box, choose Confirm return.

   Note

   This action can’t be reverted.

You can view returned Savings Plans in the Savings Plans inventory page in the console or by calling the DescribeSavingsPlans action in the AWS SDK/CLI. Returned Savings Plans appear with the status of Returned.

Savings Plan return restrictions

If you submit a request to return a Savings Plan and it is ineligible, you'll receive an error related to one of the following reasons:

• The limit for your consolidated billing family has been met. If you're using a single AWS account, the limit for that account has been met.

  For more information about quotas, see Quotas and restrictions.

• The Savings Plan is not in an "active" state. Only Savings Plans that have been activated can be returned. To return a “payment-pending” Savings Plan, wait for it to activate.

• The hourly commitment is greater than $100.

• The request has been made by a user with insufficient permissions.

  Note

  Only root users or IAM users with the savingsplans:returnSavingsPlan permission can return a Savings Plan in their account. The AWS managed policy AWSSavingsPlansFullAccess includes that permission.

• The Savings Plan was purchased in a different month or in the same month but more than seven days ago.

• The Savings Plan is an All Upfront or Partial Upfront Savings Plan and you are registered under AWS Brazil or AWS Turkey.

  For more information about seller of record (SOR), see Finding the seller of record.

• The management account is not the same as the management account used when purchasing the Savings Plan.