AWS Free Tier (2025): What's Free & For How Long

You saw “Free Tier” and spun up a few services. It looked safe and simple.

But at the end of the month?

Surprise charges. Confusion. Frustration.

That’s when many realize: maybe AWS Free Tier is just a myth after all.

But here's the truth, AWS Free Tier isn’t a myth. It has limits, and those limits are often misunderstood.

Some are time-based and some are usage-based.

This guide clears up that confusion, so you know exactly what to expect before you get billed.

Recently, AWS upgraded its Free Tier offerings, introducing changes that took effect after July 15, 2025.

In this guide, we’ll cover both the previous Free Tier plan (before July 15) and the updated one, so you have a full picture.

Free Tier Plan Before July 15, 2025

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If your AWS account was created before July 15, 2025, AWS offers three types of Free Tier plans:

• 12 Months Free

• Always Free

• Short-Term Trials

12 Months Free

This plan gives you access to some of AWS’s most popular services like EC2, S3 for free for the first 12 months after you create your account. After that, standard pay-as-you-go pricing applies.

Even during the free 12 months, there are limits, and if you go beyond them, you’ll be billed.

Take EC2, for example:

• AWS lets you run a t2.micro or t3.micro EC2 instance for free, up to 750 hours per month.

• You can launch multiple instances, but their total combined usage must not exceed 750 hours in a month.

• For example, if you run 2 instances, you can only use each one for up to 375 hours (750 ÷ 2) to stay within the free limit.

• Also, launching EC2 instance requires:

  • Amazon Machine Image (AMI): If you choose a paid AMI from the AWS Marketplace, you will be charged for it.

  • EBS volume. The Free Tier gives you 30 GB of EBS per month. If you exceed that, you will be billed for the extra usage.

After 12 months, the Free Tier ends automatically and your account switches to standard pay-as-you-go billing, even though you may still see the Free Tier label when selecting a t2.micro instance.

Always Free

This plan includes services that are free forever, not just for the first 12 months.

Examples:

• AWS Lambda: 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.

• Amazon SQS: 1 million requests per month.

• And other more services.

These limits reset at the beginning of each month.

If you exceed these limits, you'll be charged according to standard pay-as-you-go pricing.

Short Term - Trial

This plan is different from the 12 Months Free and Always Free tiers. It usually applies to newly launched services that AWS wants customers to try. These offers are time-bound trials and only start after you activate the service.

Example:

• Amazon Inspector gives you a 15-days free trial.

• After you enable it, the trial starts.

• Once the trial ends, you’ll be charged based on standard pricing.

AWS doesn’t notify you when a trial period ends. To avoid unexpected charges, make sure to stop or terminate any trial-based resources before the period expires.

Free Tier Plan After July 15, 2025

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After July 15, 2025, AWS updated its Free Tier offerings. While the Always Free and Short-Term Trial plans remain the same, the previous 12 Months Free plan has been replaced with two new categories:

• Free Plan (New)

• Paid Plan (New)

• Always Free

• Short-Term Trials

Free Plan (New)

This plan replaces the previous "12 Months Free" plan. Instead of giving you monthly usage limits, AWS now provides $200 in free credits.

• You get $100 in credits when you create your account.

• You can earn another $100 by exploring more AWS services.

This plan supports more features but has limited services available. For example, you can launch EC2 instances with types like T3.micro, T3.small, T4g.micro, T4g.small, C7i-flex.large, and M7i-flex.large.

Even though you're required to enter your payment details when creating the account, you won’t be charged even if you exceed your credits. Instead, AWS will suspend your account while still retaining your data, giving you the option to upgrade to a paid plan later.

The plan is valid for 6 months or until you use up the $200, whichever comes first. It's ideal for students, startups, and new users who want to try AWS without risk.

You can switch to the Paid Plan anytime, either after your credits expire or earlier if you're ready to build real production workloads.

→ Make sure to read the Free Tier FAQ. It answers most common questions clearly.

Paid Plan (New)

This plan is similar to the Free Plan but is designed for real production workloads.

You’ll still receive $200 in free credits and your account will not be suspended when the credits run out or after 6 months.

Instead, once you exceed the $200 credit limit, you’ll start receiving bills based on standard AWS pricing.

Think of this as a regular AWS account where you can access all AWS services just like any other paying customer.

Ways to Find Free Tier Plan for AWS Services

• Official AWS Free Tier Page

  Start by visiting the official AWS Free Tier page. It gives you a comprehensive overview of all services available under Free Tier, categorized into Always Free, 12-Month Free, and Trials.

• Service-Specific Documentation

  Check the pricing section in each service’s documentation. It clearly outlines both standard pricing and Free Tier eligibility, if available.

• AWS Console Resource Launch

  When creating resources in your AWS account, some services display Free Tier eligibility before launching. This is useful for verifying if the service you’re about to use is covered.

  

• Free Tier Usage Dashboard

  Inside your AWS account, go to Billing and Cost Management → Free Tier. This dashboard shows how much Free Tier usage you've consumed per service, including remaining quotas.

  

Understanding how AWS Free Tier works helps you make the most, even for production use. In the end, every business aims to reduce cloud costs.

For beginners, the Free Tier is a great way to learn AWS. I have been there myself, running small projects using EC2, S3, and Lambda to build real-world applications without spending a single penny.

I hope this clears up your confusion about the AWS Free Tier.

Thanks for reading.

- Alon