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I was dorking around with AWS (and related services), hoping that I could stay in the Free Tier, like I do when I'm exploring Google App Engine.

A few days ago, I get a letter from Amazon that they've charged me $33 or so for my 2 days of exploration.

This has got to end, but I forget what services I've enabled. Ideally, I'd just disable the AWS account entirely, as without a free sandbox there's no way I'm going to be using their service. Is there a global off button, or do I have to stumble around to turn all their services off individually? Or do I have to delete my CC information and just create a new Amazon account altogether?

PaulProgrammer
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    how about submitting them a support ticket? they reply rather fast usually – yegor256 Jul 08 '13 at 14:18
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    i'm freaking out. I was 100% sure i signed up for free tier. And i even went over the things i could do and not. 1 month passes i am being charged ~$30. what should i do? I haven't even used it for anything. Never uploaded anything or etc. All i did is start micro something following some tutorial... which free tier said would be free for 1 years. – Muhammad Umer Feb 06 '15 at 20:22
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    Yep. AWS "Free" == "Free-ish". Not good customer experience. – PaulProgrammer Feb 10 '15 at 17:23
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    I have the same problem. I have been charged 236$ and counting! Although I disabled EC2 instances, it keeps charing me. Any way I can stop it? – Ahmadov Jan 05 '16 at 12:57
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    18,201 Views of this question,4 years since question was raised and still no global off button. Almost as if they are purposefully making it hard. – Ryan Hamilton Dec 03 '17 at 13:19
  • I've just recently being stung by this by using an Amazon Aurora MySQL database rather than the standard one. It wasn't that well advertised when I chose it that it wasn't under the free tier. $54 for an idle WordPress instance for the month! – Danny Cullen Feb 05 '18 at 16:09
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    *Remember to change region selection to configured one at the top right side. e.g us-west-1 to stop the instance. – Shrawan Jul 26 '18 at 19:31
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    This recently happened to me, except amazon charged me $900 for a forgotten ec2 instance I had activated and never utilized. i would _love_ a global off button because their UI / UX is so amazingly bad. Better yet just don't do shady biz practices like negative billing. That would be even better. – mishap_n Aug 12 '18 at 15:48
  • AWS: just got me for $26 bucks, what joke, Google and Heroku and others free, why continue with AWS, if they don't even know their audience? – cfphpflex Oct 23 '18 at 01:27
  • Happened to me too... completed unused beanstalk instance racking up $46/mo until for 3 months before I noticed. I didn't even know I had anything running – tarrball Nov 04 '19 at 18:42
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    2020, still an issue. – Catsy Apr 14 '20 at 11:49
  • I suddenly paid $0.19 for using CodeBuild for like 2 days... And I thought it was free. – xdevs23 Jan 03 '21 at 12:16
  • @xdevs23 any chance you exceeded the 100 free build minutes per month or used non-free instance types? – jarmod Oct 18 '22 at 16:12
  • @jarmod I don't think so but now it has been too long for me to remember. I have since deleted my AWS account. – xdevs23 Oct 19 '22 at 17:58
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    The craziest thing is that now when they email you to alert you that your free tier is ending, they say "Note: Closing your account will NOT automatically terminate all resources and you might still be charged." Yet without a global nuke button or global dashboard (that I can find) it's hard to be sure you don't have something running somewhere. I'll think twice about experimenting with AWS in the future. I believe other providers are friendlier. – Stephen Jan 07 '23 at 23:38
  • @Stephen I deleted all resources but they still charged me a few cents every month which is why I closed the account after which they stopped billing me. Maybe it would be a good idea to use something like Terraform instead of manually creating resources since this is more likely to be able to delete all resources when destroying and not leave things dangling around. – xdevs23 Jul 29 '23 at 08:55

6 Answers6

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You can close your entire account in AWS Billing: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home?#/account

Or if you just want to disable your "Free-Tier" services that has charges, view them here: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/freetier

Then open your EC2 dashboard - and cancel those services:

https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/ec2

For example: Stop running instances, delete volumes, remove elastic IPs, etc.

Otherwise, I recommend sending an email to webservices@amazon.com from the email you used to signup with their service.

Noam Manos
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Ryan Weir
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    Cancel services is only for cancelling support plans. It has nothing to do with canceling services which AWS *really* don't want you to cancel. – Karlth May 05 '16 at 14:41
  • The documentation may also help http://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_accounts_close.html – lony Nov 28 '17 at 18:18
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    and Delete your credit card or update the credit card record to fake data – cfphpflex Oct 23 '18 at 01:32
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    Worth noting that even if you delete your credit card information, Amazon will continue to charge to any and all cards they have ever had associated with your account. It's in their terms and conditions... – Kelly Bang Apr 24 '20 at 04:02
  • The only one thing I could do is to close my account in this mess! – Denis Apr 03 '23 at 17:17
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I had an RDS running and I couldn't figure out how to cancel just that service

Here's how to do it:

enter image description here

You'll find NAME OF SERVICE + ITS LOCATION. This is the information you need.

Go to topright of page. Select the correct server location

enter image description here

The rest is straightforward from here

Vincent Tang
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23

I was also frustrated (by being charged on the free tier without any info/warning in prior) and found a simple and elegant solution to turn off all AWS services. You delete your account and forget about these fraudulent (to be honest) AWS services.

Here is the link:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home?#/account

Here is the section:

enter image description here

nosbor
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    I did the same, I really tried so hard to disable all services, I stopped some instances and then other instances are created – Tiberiu Popescu Sep 03 '20 at 11:19
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    @tibbus presumably because you had created an Auto Scaling Group, or had some other automation replacing terminated instances? – jarmod Oct 18 '22 at 15:58
  • AWS takes 90 days to 'close' your account. After this period, all resurces and services related to your account are finally removed. – mggSoft Apr 10 '23 at 10:56
  • i just did this. thank you. this is ridiculous that i am getting charged without warnings or confirmations on a FREE Tier account. i'm so annoyed and irritated now. had i not checked the billing it would have piled up through the roof. now that i canceled my account am i still going to get charged somehow? i never linked my credit card other than... while registering.. – busuu Jun 06 '23 at 20:45
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I know this is a somehow an old question, but I would like to add a new answer because I think AWS has changed a lot since this was asked. I have stumbled on a similar situation as the OP and I found out that there are 3 possible ways to achieve this:

  • To have a single turn-off-everything button, but I'm not sure if this exists.
  • Overkill, go through the services and check them one by one and shutdown/delete any instances or running services.
  • To find out the actual source of leaking (cost occurring services) by viewing what is posting charges on your account and then turn off these services one by one. This can be done by visiting:

your AWS account >> My Billing Dashboard

Find your account username and open the drop down menu:

enter image description here

You can check what services are incurring fees.

enter image description here

Percentage table:

enter image description here

I followed the services by searching for their name on AWS console, if I couldn't find it I'd Google how to do so and then turned them off one by one.

In my case, there was no charge towards my bank even thought billing showed I have some balance, I think it's because I was using the free tier, maybe?

Mohammed Joraid
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    What does "I followed the services and turned them off one by one" mean? Where did you "follow" them? I don't see any links to the actual service consoles in the billing dashboard. Did you manually search for them? – Laurence Gonsalves May 27 '19 at 23:39
  • Yes. I started from Billing Dashboard to see what was posting charges. Then I went and searched for them in the console and google how to set them off or disable or delete.I can't really remember as this was two years ago. – Mohammed Joraid May 28 '19 at 07:45
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    This should be the accepted answer – Sean Feb 08 '22 at 15:38
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I just hit my free tier limit. I terminated my ec2 instance, deleted my storage volume and even removed my security group and key pair so I have nothing now. Hopefully no charge :P

Always make sure you select the right region. I once had 2 instances running and didnt realize it.

enter image description here

RiCHiE
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  • Top notch, didnt know that. Had to bill even though I thought I had removed everything frmo the EC2 dashboard. But it was hidden because I was on the wrong location. Damn it, thanks! – tim Apr 03 '19 at 15:17
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Today I finally discovered a global view to detect all the active services, you still have to disable every service manually but at least you don't have to switch all the regions to understand where you have active services.

Ares9323
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    I thought I had deactivated all AWS services and my bill was $0. But to my surprise this page had over 20 resources listed and when the 1 year free period ended I would have been billed again. Thanks for the info. – mitsu Feb 08 '23 at 00:47
  • This is a big help. Thank you! – FredTheWebGuy Aug 05 '23 at 17:04