🚀 Mastering AWS Free Tier: 6 Smart Moves to Avoid Surprise Bills as a Beginner

If you're just getting started with AWS, the 12-Month Free Tier is your best friend—but only if you play it smart. One wrong click can turn a free experiment into a hefty bill. Here’s how to stay within Free Tier limits, avoid nasty billing shocks, and make the most of your AWS journey from Day 1.

✅ 1. Know What’s Actually Free

Not everything is free just because you’re in the Free Tier. Here's what’s typically included:

• 750 hours/month of EC2 t2.micro or t3.micro (Linux or Windows)

• 5 GB of S3 standard storage

• 750 hours/month of RDS db.t2.micro (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.)

• And more—check the Free Tier details regularly

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🔔 2. Set a Billing Alarm Immediately

Before launching a single instance:

• Go to Billing → Budgets → Create Budget

• Set an alert at $1 or $5

• Get notified the moment costs begin to creep up

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📊 3. Use Cost Explorer to Stay In Control

• Filter by service, region, or linked accounts

• Quickly spot usage trends

• Catch unexpected charges before they snowball

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🏷️ 4. Tag Everything for Easy Tracking

Add tags like:

• Environment: dev

• Purpose: demo

This makes your billing and cleanup efforts painless and organized.

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🧹 5. Clean Up Proactively

Leaving resources running—even if they're "stopped"—can still cost you.

• EC2 stopped = free (but EBS volumes = charged)

• RDS paused = still charged for storage

• EBS snapshots, unused IPs, etc. = still cost money

• Unattached/unused Elastic IPs = charged if not associated with a running instance

• Unreleased Elastic IPs = continue accruing charges even if not in use

Be ruthless with cleanup.

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🔐 6. Restrict What Can Be Launched

• Use IAM policies to prevent launching services outside Free Tier

• Block expensive services like NAT Gateways, large EC2 instances, or provisioned IOPS

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💡 Final Tip:

Spend one hour today setting things up right, and you’ll save yourself from potentially thousands of dollars in accidental AWS charges down the line.