0

I'm a student and I'm new to AWS. I've already created a Free Tier account and set my budget to 1$. I only use the account for testing/learning purposes. After reading this post on SOF (about a guy who creates an account for learning purposes like me, then loses a bunch of $ for no reason), I'm quite worried. I have some questions about how Amazon charges me.

Does my bill become 0$ if I terminate every service/remove all resources before the end of a month? I sent this question to AWS support and they said as long as I stop every Outbound Data transfer service then it's fine. People on the internet also said that if I remove all the resources after testing/learning then it's ok too.

I'm still not sure. Does it mean that I can use every service as much as possible, as long as I terminate/remove everything before the end of a month then I won't get charged? And at the start of the next month, I can do everything again? Sound like an exploit and impossible case to me.

It's like at the start of a month, you borrow an iPhone 13 from an Apple shop, you use the phone for free for 1 month, and at the end of a month, you factory reset the phone and brought it back to the shop. Next month you do everything again.

MC Emperor
  • 22,334
  • 15
  • 80
  • 130
Hoang Minh Quang FX15045
  • 733
  • 1
  • 4
  • 15
  • If you haven't already, enable billing alerts and see [Creating a billing alarm to monitor your estimated AWS charges](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/monitor_estimated_charges_with_cloudwatch.html). – jarmod Oct 18 '22 at 16:05
  • 1
    @jarmod I created Budget (1$ ~ Free Tier Budget) and Billing Alert. But as far as I know, it's only alarming by email, not forcing stop all the service. 1$ is very small so I don't think there is anything I can do if they suddenly charged me. When I receive the alert I'd have already lost some $ – Hoang Minh Quang FX15045 Oct 18 '22 at 16:52

1 Answers1

2

No, you're misunderstanding something. AWS costs accrue as you use services. For example, if you start an EC2 instance, use it for 10 minutes, then stop it, you will be billed for each minute of usage at the rate shown on the EC2 pricing page. Similarly, if you store objects on S3 for a period of time and later delete them, you will be billed for the duration you stored the object.

You can see what services are available for free perpetually on the AWS Free Tier.

Ben Whaley
  • 32,811
  • 7
  • 87
  • 85