AWS costs: Free tier 2025+ - credits model fully explained

Short answer: no, AWS has not offered a flat 12-month free ride to new customers since July 15, 2025. If you signed up after that date, you get up to $200 in AWS credits — $100 automatically, up to $100 more for completing five onboarding tasks — spendable for six months on a Free Plan, or indefinitely on a Paid Plan once you're past the credits. The counterintuitive part: those two clocks (6 months and 12 months) run at the same time but measure different things, and mixing them up is exactly how people end up staring at a closed AWS account with their side project still inside it.

Jake found this out the expensive way — well, almost the expensive way. He runs a small phone repair shop, and over a slow Sunday he'd decided to build himself a little inventory tracker on AWS, following a tutorial he'd bookmarked years ago. The tutorial promised "12 months completely free." He signed up that afternoon, uploaded his parts list to a database, and figured he had a year to tinker with it before he needed to think about money.

What actually changed on July 15, 2025

For fifteen years, the deal was the same for every new AWS account: sign up, and for the next 12 months you got a curated list of services free up to certain limits — 750 hours a month of a small EC2 server, 5 GB of S3 storage, 750 hours of a small RDS database, and so on. Once the 12 months ended, those specific allowances stopped, and only a smaller list of "Always Free" services kept going indefinitely.

On July 15, 2025, AWS retired that structure for anyone opening a new account. In its place, new customers now choose between two account types when they sign up: a Free Plan and a Paid Plan. Both plans include the same starting pot of promotional credit — up to $200 — that can be spent across more than 200 eligible services, not just the handful the old 12-month list covered.

The 30-plus Always Free services — the ones that never expire, no matter when you signed up — weren't touched by this change. AWS Lambda's 1 million free requests a month, for example, are just as free today as they were before July 2025. What changed is everything around that: how you get free access to bigger services like EC2 or RDS, and how long that free access sticks around before the account itself is affected.

Free Plan vs. Paid Plan — how the credits actually work

When you create an AWS account today, sign-up asks you to pick one of two account plans. Both plans give a new customer USD $100 in credits automatically, with the chance to earn up to $100 more by completing a short list of onboarding activities — up to $200 total, applied against usage on eligible services rather than locked to a specific product.

Where the two plans differ is what happens once you're past the free part, and how much of AWS you can actually touch while you're still exploring.

How to actually earn the full $200

The first $100 lands in your account automatically the moment you sign up, on either plan. The second $100 has to be earned, one small task at a time, through the "Explore AWS" widget on your AWS Console Home dashboard. Each task is worth $20, and all five have to be completed within six months of opening your account to count.

1. Launch an instance using Amazon EC2. You spin up a small virtual server and learn how to clean it up afterward. This activity does incur real AWS service charges along the way, which come straight out of your credits — not your wallet.
2. Use a foundational model in the Amazon Bedrock playground. You pick a model and submit a prompt through Bedrock's built-in interface. Same rule: charges are deducted from your Free Tier credits.
3. Set up a cost budget using AWS Budgets. You create a budget that alerts you when spending approaches or crosses a threshold you set — genuinely useful on its own, and the one activity on this list with no usage charge attached to it.
4. Create a web app using AWS Lambda. You build a simple serverless function with a public function URL. Charges from this activity also come out of your credits.
5. Create an Amazon RDS database. You launch an RDS or Aurora database and walk through the basic configuration options. This one draws on your credits too.

Notice that four of the five activities spend a small amount of the very credits they're supposed to help you earn. That's not a trick — it's how AWS designed the program, to have you actually touch the services rather than click through a checklist — but it does mean the $200 figure is the ceiling, not a number everyone reaches with money to spare. You can verify whether an activity's credit landed by checking the Credits page in the Billing and Cost Management Console; AWS notes it can take up to 30 minutes to appear.

The two clocks: 6-month plan vs. 12-month credits

This is the single most misunderstood part of the new system, and it's worth slowing down for. Two separate timers start the moment you create your account, and they measure two different things:

• The Free Plan clock — 6 months. This governs whether your account stays on the Free Plan at all. It expires at 6 months from account creation, or when your credits are fully used, whichever happens first. It has nothing to do with the Paid Plan.
• The credits clock — 12 months. This governs how long your $100–$200 in credits remain spendable, on either plan. Free Tier credits expire 12 months from the date you created your account, full stop.

Put those together and something useful falls out: if you start on the Free Plan and upgrade to the Paid Plan before your six months are up — say, at month three, because you decide the project is a keeper — your remaining credits don't reset or vanish. They keep applying to your bill automatically until the original 12-month mark, at which point whatever's left simply expires. Upgrading doesn't forfeit what you've already been allotted; it just removes the six-month ceiling that was going to close the account.

What happens when your Free Plan expires

This is the part that catches people off guard, because it doesn't behave like a subscription running out — there's no grace period where things keep working while you decide what to do. When your Free Plan expires, AWS closes the account, and you immediately lose access to your resources and data. There's no warning invoice, no partial-service mode. It stops.

The good news is that closed doesn't mean deleted, at least not right away. AWS retains your content for 90 days after the Free Plan expires. During that window, here's the actual sequence for getting back in:

1. Notice the account is closed. You'll be locked out of console access. Before this happens, AWS sends periodic email alerts about your credit balance and remaining days as you approach the expiration — pay attention to those emails rather than relying on memory of your signup date.
2. Decide within 90 days whether you want the data back. If you don't act inside that window, AWS permanently erases the account and everything in it — there's no recovery after that.
3. Upgrade to the Paid Plan to reopen the account. This is the only way back in; a closed Free Plan account cannot simply be renewed or extended. Upgrading restores access to your existing resources and data.
4. Download whatever you need before you close it again. Once you're back in on the Paid Plan, you can retrieve your data. If the point was only to grab your files, AWS's own guidance is to close the account afterward through the standard account-closure process, to avoid any further billing.

Worth repeating plainly, because a lot of the confusion out there comes from people assuming otherwise: you cannot extend the Free Plan beyond six months by any setting or request, and once you're on the Paid Plan, there's no path back down to the Free Plan. It's a one-way door.

The 30+ Always Free services — the part none of this touched

Underneath all of the plan and credit machinery sits a layer that the July 2025 change left completely alone: over 30 "Always Free" services with permanent monthly usage limits, available to every AWS account regardless of age, plan, or credit balance. If you exceed one of these monthly allowances, charges kick in at standard rates and your Free Tier credits (if you still have any) are applied automatically to cover the difference.

Two things worth flagging about that table. First, DynamoDB's free allowance applies to provisioned-capacity tables, not on-demand ones — on-demand tables are billed per request from the very first read or write, though the 25 GB storage allowance still applies regardless of capacity mode. Second, Lambda's free tier is genuinely permanent: it's not tied to your credit balance or plan type at all, which is exactly why so many small serverless projects — a Lambda function backed by a DynamoDB table — can run indefinitely at $0, long after any signup credits are gone, provided usage stays inside those monthly caps.

The full, current list of Always Free offers — filterable by category — lives on the AWS Free Tier page itself, under "Explore our offers." Because AWS updates individual service limits from time to time, that page is the one to check before you plan a project around a specific number rather than trusting a screenshot from an old tutorial.

If your account predates July 15, 2025

None of the six-month, credit-based mechanics above apply to you if your account was opened before the cutover date. AWS is explicit that all the benefits of the existing Free Tier program remain unchanged for existing customers — you keep your original 12-month, service-specific trial and your Always Free allowances exactly as they were. You are, however, not eligible to receive the new $200 in Free Tier credits or to switch into a Free Plan; that offer is reserved for new customers only.

In practice this means two people reading the same "AWS Free Tier" search result today can have completely different experiences depending purely on when they clicked "Create account" — one working against a 12-month EC2/RDS/S3 allowance with no credit balance to track, the other working against a $200 credit pool with a six-month or twelve-month deadline depending on their plan. Neither is wrong; they're just different programs that happen to share a name.

What the Free Plan won't let you touch

The Free Plan isn't a stripped-down demo of AWS — it genuinely reaches over 150 services — but it's deliberately blocked from the corner of AWS that could burn through $200 almost instantly or that involves buying physical hardware. Free account plans don't have access to AWS Marketplace purchases, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, or hardware appliance offerings. They're also ineligible for other promotional credits or incentive offers stacked on top of the Free Tier credits.

None of those restrictions apply on the Paid Plan. If a tutorial you're following asks you to buy a Reserved Instance or subscribe to something through AWS Marketplace and the option isn't there, that's very likely why — and upgrading removes the block instantly, without needing to re-enter payment details.

Tracking your credits so nothing sneaks up on you

AWS builds the monitoring tools in rather than leaving you to guess, but they only help if you actually look at them.

1. Check the Cost and Usage widget on the Console Home dashboard. It shows your free plan expiration date, current credit balance, and days remaining, updated in near-real time.
2. Open the Credits page in the Billing and Cost Management Console. This lists every credit you've received, including the specific expiration date for each one — useful if you earned credits at different times through onboarding activities.
3. Set an email address for Free Tier usage alerts. Under Billing preferences, you can update where AWS sends the notification it fires whenever you exceed a Free Tier limit for a specific service — worth pointing at an inbox you actually check.
4. Set up an AWS Budget with a low threshold. This is literally one of the five credit-earning onboarding activities, and it's the one with no usage charge attached — there's no real reason to skip it.
5. Use the Free Tier APIs if you're comfortable with the CLI or SDK. GetAccountPlanState tells you your plan and expiration status programmatically; GetFreeTierUsage tells you exactly how close you are to each Always Free limit, by service, usage type, and region.

Ethan's take on this one is blunt: "Budgets and alerts aren't optional extras for a Free Tier account — they're the only reason the word 'free' means anything. AWS tells you what you're using; it doesn't tell you to stop." Jake set up his budget alert at $1, which felt almost paranoid until he realized that's exactly the point — a $1 threshold means the first sign of trouble arrives as an email, not a bill.

Things that silently switch you to the Paid Plan

A Free Plan account can be upgraded to Paid without you deliberately clicking "Upgrade Plan." AWS lists several triggers that cause an automatic upgrade: creating or joining an AWS Organization, setting up an AWS Control Tower landing zone, joining the AWS Partner Network, creating a Professional Services contract, enrolling in an Enterprise Agreement, purchasing an AWS Skill Builder Team subscription, or designating your account as HIPAA or SEC compliant.

Most of these are things a hobbyist or student is unlikely to stumble into by accident. AWS Organizations is the one exception worth watching, since it's a genuinely common next step for anyone experimenting with multi-account setups — and as covered above, it's also the specific trigger that expires your remaining credits immediately rather than letting them ride out to the 12-month mark.

So which plan should you actually pick?

Jake's inventory tracker is a genuinely good example of the fork in the road. If he'd known about the Free Plan's six-month cliff going in, he'd have made a different call — not because the Free Plan is a bad option, but because his project wasn't a six-month experiment. It was a tool he wanted to keep using at the shop.

"I told him to think about it the way he thinks about a loaner phone he gives customers," Ethan said. "If you know you want it back in a fixed window, the loaner terms are fine. If you're planning to keep using it, you don't want a hard deadline built into the deal — you want the version where nothing gets switched off, and you just watch the meter."

That maps fairly directly onto AWS's own framing: the Free Plan is described as ideal for customers experimenting with AWS services and building proof-of-concepts at no cost, while the Paid Plan is aimed at production applications that scale beyond the initial credit amount. Since both plans grant the identical $200 in credits and neither charges you a cent while those credits last, there's no financial reason to prefer the Free Plan for anything you intend to keep — the only thing it buys you is a guarantee against future charges, at the cost of an account that closes itself on a schedule you don't control.

Frequently asked questions

Do I still get 12 months of free AWS?

Only if your account was created before July 15, 2025. Accounts created on or after that date get up to $200 in credits instead, spendable for up to 6 months on the Free Plan or up to 12 months on the Paid Plan.

What happens if I don't pick a plan — is there a default?

AWS sign-up requires you to choose between the Free Plan and Paid Plan as part of account creation; there isn't a way to skip the choice.

Can I switch from Free Plan to Paid Plan later?

Yes, at any time, by selecting "Upgrade Plan" in the Cost and Usage widget or the Billing and Cost Management console. Your remaining credits carry over and keep applying to your bill until their original 12-month expiration date.

Can I go back from Paid Plan to Free Plan?

No. AWS states plainly that you cannot downgrade a Paid Plan account back to the Free Plan.

Do the $200 in credits cover EC2 and RDS?

Yes — the credits apply broadly across eligible AWS services rather than being locked to a specific product, and EC2 and RDS are both explicitly listed among the onboarding activities that use them.

What happens to my data if my Free Plan account closes?

AWS retains your content for 90 days after the Free Plan expires. You can regain access by upgrading to the Paid Plan within that window; after 90 days, the account and all its content are permanently erased.

Will I get billed automatically when my credits run out on the Paid Plan?

Yes. On the Paid Plan, once your credit balance is exhausted, or you use a service that credits don't apply to, you're charged at standard pay-as-you-go rates without any separate confirmation step.

I already have an AWS account from 2023 — do I get the new $200 credits too?

No. AWS Free Tier credits and the Free Plan are only available to new AWS customers; existing accounts are ineligible for the new credits or the free account plan.

Does the Free Plan include AWS Lambda and DynamoDB the same as Paid?

The Always Free allowances for services like Lambda and DynamoDB are available on both plans, unaffected by which plan you're on. Beyond those free allowances, usage on either plan draws from the same shared credit balance.

What counts as a "new AWS customer" for these credits?

Someone who has never had an AWS account before. You're ineligible for the Free Plan or Free Tier credits if you have an existing AWS account or have had one in the past.

Can I use the Free Plan for a production website?

Technically nothing stops you from trying, but a Free Plan account is designed to close after 6 months or when credits run out — whichever comes first — with no warning grace period beyond the email alerts. For anything you plan to keep running, the Paid Plan removes that risk while still giving you the same credits and no charges until they're used.

Do I need a credit card to sign up for the Free Plan?

Yes. AWS requires a valid payment method on both plans to verify identity and prevent abuse. On the Free Plan, that method isn't charged unless and until you upgrade to Paid, and you won't need to re-enter it when you do.

What are the five onboarding activities that earn the extra $100?

Launching an EC2 instance, submitting a prompt in the Amazon Bedrock playground, setting up a cost budget with AWS Budgets, building a simple web app with AWS Lambda, and creating an Amazon RDS or Aurora database — each worth $20, completed within six months of account creation.

Does AWS warn me before my Free Plan account closes?

Yes, through periodic email alerts about your credit balance and days remaining as your expiration approaches — but there's no delay or grace period once the six-month mark or credit exhaustion actually arrives; the account closes at that point.

Are the AWS Free Tier credits available in every region?

No. Free Tier credits and account plan selections aren't available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, with limited exceptions for certain services, or in the China (Beijing and Ningxia) Regions.

What happens if I join AWS Organizations while I'm still under my credits?

Your account automatically upgrades to the Paid Plan, and any remaining Free Tier credits expire immediately — you also become ineligible to earn further Free Tier credits from that point on.

Revision note. Written September 2026, covering the AWS Free Tier Free Plan and Paid Plan structure introduced July 15, 2025, plus the legacy 12-month Free Tier still in effect for accounts opened before that date. This is a program AWS can revise again with a "What's New" post and no personal notice, so if a specific dollar figure or activity list here has moved, the AWS Free Tier FAQs page is the one to trust over this one. If you're staring at a closed account and a half-finished project right now, take a breath — your data likely isn't gone yet, and there's a real path back to it above.Happy learning, See you on next post!