AWS replaced its 12-month free tier with credits in July 2025, plus a Free plan that closes your account after six months. Three kinds of "free", four common misreadings.
Search for "AWS Free Tier" and most guides tell you the same thing: sign up and you get twelve months of free usage — 750 hours of EC2 a month, free RDS, free S3.
That description is out of date. On 15 July 2025 AWS changed the Free Tier for new customers to a credit-based model, and introduced an account plan called Free plan that will close your account after a period of time.
What makes it worse: accounts created before that date still follow the old rules. So current information online mixes two rule sets, and the tutorial you are reading may describe a product you cannot sign up for. (Also worth separating: a free tier is not a discount — one is an allowance, the other a unit price. All five compared in cloud discount mechanisms compared.)
This article follows the post-July-2025 rules (for new accounts). Terms may change again — always confirm current figures on the official AWS Free Tier page.
"Twelve months free" no longer describes what AWS offers
The change is not just a different way of giving things away. It alters three things: how much you get free, how long it lasts, and what happens to the account afterwards.
| Old model (accounts before 2025-07-15) | New model (accounts from 2025-07-15) | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Twelve months of specified free usage | Credits you can spend on almost any service |
| Amount | Fixed per-service allowances (e.g. 750 EC2 hours/month) | Part granted at signup, part earned through activities, up to a total |
| Validity | Twelve months | Two different clocks: the plan ending vs the credits expiring |
| Plan choice at signup | None | Required — Free plan or Paid plan |
| Account afterwards | Converts to pay-as-you-go, keeps existing | Depends on which plan you chose |
The practical effect: more flexible, less predictable. You are no longer confined to a fixed menu of free services, but you are spending down a finite balance rather than a monthly allowance that resets. That difference is the root of every misreading below.
Three kinds of "free" that behave nothing alike
This is the single biggest source of confusion, and the main reason people get charged when they expected not to be. AWS "free" is three separate categories, and they behave completely differently.
- ① Credits — a balance, like a prepaid card. Eligible resources draw it down, it does not reset monthly, and it has an expiry date — whatever is left at that point is gone.
- ② Always Free — more than thirty services carry monthly free allowances that reset every month and do not roll over, and they are available regardless of which plan you chose. Lambda, DynamoDB and CloudWatch are in this group.
- ③ Trials — some services offer a time-limited trial. ⚠️ The clock starts the first time you use that specific service, not when you created the account. That catches people out: sign up in January, first use a service in June, and the trial runs from June.
The rule to apply: whenever you read the word "free", ask which of the three it is — a balance, a monthly resetting allowance, or a timed trial. Those correspond to three completely different billing behaviours. "It is on the free tier" on its own tells you nothing.
The choice you make at signup: Free plan or Paid plan
Under the new model you pick an account plan when you sign up. The consequences are not visible on the signup screen, and they matter.
| Free plan | Paid plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Can it incur charges | No. That is its main value — no billing once credits run out | Yes. Standard on-demand rates apply once credits are used up |
| Lifetime | Ends when credits are exhausted or the period expires, whichever comes first | No expiry; the account persists |
| Service access | Limited; some services unavailable | All services |
| What happens at the end | ⚠️ AWS closes the account; resources and data become inaccessible | Nothing; you carry on |
| Best for | Learning, validating an idea, proofs of concept | Real workloads and long-term use |
The one thing to understand here: when a Free plan ends, it does not downgrade to a free version — the account is closed. AWS retains your data for a period so you can retrieve or restore it; past that, the account and its contents are permanently deleted.
So if you intend to keep using AWS, or you are running anything you care about, Paid plan is the right choice — you start paying once credits are exhausted, but the account does not vanish. Free plan suits "I just want to try this".
Another trigger worth knowing: if your account joins an AWS Organization or sets up a Control Tower landing zone, the free credits expire immediately and the account is automatically upgraded to a paid plan. In other words, if you plan to adopt enterprise-grade account management, the free credits largely do not apply.
Four misreadings that cost people money
Misreading 1: assuming the allowance resets monthly
Credits do not reset monthly. They are a one-off balance: spend some and it is gone. Only the Always Free category resets each month. Confusing the two will produce an unexpected charge in month two.
Misreading 2: assuming a stopped instance stops costing money
Stopping an EC2 instance does stop the compute charge — but attached storage volumes keep billing. Databases behave the same way: stopping the instance stops instance hours, while storage and backup charges continue. Stopping is not deleting. To stop the cost entirely you have to remove the instances and their snapshots.
There is also a newer line item people miss: public IPv4 addresses themselves are billed, in use or not. An automatically assigned address is released when the instance stops, but an Elastic IP stays associated and keeps charging. Classic "you will never notice until you look" billing.
Misreading 3: assuming "on the free tier" means free
A service appearing in the free tier list means some part of its usage is free under certain conditions — no more. Excess usage, additional data types, cross-region traffic and extra storage are usually outside it. The evidence is your actual usage page, not whether the service is on a list.
Misreading 4: mixing up old and new account rules
Accounts created before 15 July 2025 still follow the old twelve-month rules; accounts created after follow the credit model. So the information you find online may describe the other rule set. When you read a guide, check its date and compare it against when your account was created.
Two paths once the credits run out
When credits are exhausted (or a Free plan ends), there are two directions, depending on what you are doing.
- Keep using AWS: upgrade to a Paid plan and pay standard on-demand rates. If your usage is already steady, provisioning or settling through a reseller is worth considering — it changes the amount you actually pay, which is a separate matter from AWS's rates. The logic is on the AWS discounts and reseller pricing page.
- Change the shape of the project: if you are only exploring, start from the Always Free services (serverless plus a managed database plus object storage can run a genuine small project inside those allowances) rather than launching an always-on server. An always-on instance is the easiest way to generate surprise charges — it bills for uptime whether you are using it or not.
A habit worth adopting: whichever plan you choose, set up a cost budget alert in the billing console. It will not shut resources down for you, but it warns you as you approach a threshold — the cheapest way to turn "surprise bill" into "expected spend", and it takes a couple of minutes.
If you are past the trial stage and running real workloads, the question is no longer "how do I use the free credits" but "how do I make the long-term bill smaller". That is covered in two other pieces: six moves to optimise an AWS bill and AWS discounts beyond EC2.
Common questions
If I sign up now, do I still get twelve months free?
The "twelve months of free usage" format no longer exists for new accounts. You receive credits usable on eligible services within a validity period. Note there are two separate clocks — the plan period and the credit expiry are different things, and credits typically outlive the plan. Confirm current terms on the official page; the rules are still being adjusted.
Why did I get less than the guide said?
Two possibilities. Either the guide predates the change, or you are looking at a total that is split — one part granted at signup and another part earned by completing onboarding activities in the console. The second part requires you to do the tasks yourself, within a deadline.
Do credits automatically offset anything I go over?
Eligible usage does draw from the balance automatically. But note that credits only cover eligible usage. Charges outside that (certain data transfer types, particular services) follow normal billing. So on a Paid plan, running out of credits or hitting a non-eligible item can produce a real charge.
Do these credits apply to accounts in mainland China?
No. The Beijing and Ningxia regions do not participate in this credit model or account plan structure; they follow separate rules. If you are reading about an overseas free tier, it does not apply to a mainland China account. The official documentation states this clearly, but many Chinese-language tutorials skip it.
Once the credits run out, will I be charged automatically?
It depends on your plan. On Free plan you will not be charged — that is what it is designed for — but the account closes when it ends. On Paid plan you are billed at standard rates and the account persists. So decide what you actually want: "never spend anything" or "an account that stays".