Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers one of the most comprehensive free tiers, but it's also one of the most complex with significant cost traps. The free tier is designed for learning and experimentation, with time-limited trials for most services.
- Credit Card Required: Mandatory for account creation
- Phone Verification: Required for account activation
- Identity Verification: Government ID may be requested for some services
- Address Requirements: Valid billing address in supported country
- Duration: 12 months from account creation date
- Scope: Applies to most services, but not all
- Extensions: Some services offer extended free tiers
Free Tier: 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro instances Duration: 12 months from account creation Limits: Linux/Windows, any region, any AMI Gotchas:
- Only free for first 12 months
- EBS storage costs extra ($0.10/GB-month)
- Public IP costs $0.005/hour if not attached to running instance
- Data transfer costs $0.09/GB outbound
Best For: Learning AWS, small web applications, development environments
Free Tier: 1 million requests/month, 400,000 GB-seconds compute time Duration: Always free (no expiration) Limits: 3.2 million seconds/month compute time Gotchas:
- Cold start latency for infrequently used functions
- VPC access removes some free tier benefits
- CloudWatch logs cost extra after basic free tier
Best For: API backends, event processing, scheduled tasks
Free Tier: 750 hours/month of t1.micro instances Duration: 12 months Limits: Single environment, basic features Gotchas: Application load balancer costs extra
Free Tier: 5GB storage, 20,000 GET requests, 2,000 PUT requests Duration: 12 months Limits: Standard storage class only Gotchas:
- Data transfer costs $0.09/GB outbound
- Requests beyond free tier cost $0.004 per 1,000 requests
- Storage costs $0.023/GB-month after free tier
Best For: Static website hosting, file storage, backups
Free Tier: 30GB total across all EBS volumes Duration: 12 months Limits: gp2, io1, or st1 volumes Gotchas:
- Only free when attached to running EC2 instances
- Snapshots cost $0.05/GB-month
- I/O costs for provisioned IOPS
Free Tier: 750 hours of db.t2.micro instances Duration: 12 months Limits: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server Gotchas:
- Storage costs $0.10/GB-month
- Backup storage costs $0.095/GB-month
- Multi-AZ deployment not free
Best For: Small applications, development databases
Free Tier: 25GB storage, 200 million requests/month Duration: Always free Limits: On-demand throughput Gotchas:
- Global tables cost extra
- Streams and backups have separate pricing
- DAX (caching) costs $0.122/hour
Best For: High-scale applications, user session data, metadata
Free Tier: 1TB outbound data transfer, 10,000,000 requests Duration: 12 months Limits: HTTP/HTTPS delivery Gotchas:
- Regional data transfer costs vary
- Lambda@Edge costs $0.60 per 1M requests
- Custom SSL certificates cost $600/year
Best For: Global content delivery, static asset distribution
Free Tier: 1 million API calls/month Duration: 12 months Limits: REST APIs, WebSocket APIs Gotchas:
- Data transfer costs $0.09/GB outbound
- Custom domains cost $36/month
- Usage plans and throttling have limits
Free Tier: Basic monitoring metrics, 10 custom metrics, 1,000 API requests Duration: Always free for basic features Limits: 5-minute granularity for basic metrics Gotchas:
- Detailed monitoring costs $0.30/GB ingested
- Logs cost $0.50/GB ingested after 5GB
- Alarms cost $0.10/alarm/month
Best For: Basic monitoring, alerting, logging
Free Tier: 1 active pipeline, 100 build minutes/month Duration: Always free Limits: AWS services only Gotchas:
- External integrations may cost extra
- Artifact storage costs apply
Free Tier: 250 hours of t2.medium notebooks, 5GB storage Duration: 12 months Limits: Jupyter notebooks, basic ML tools Gotchas: Model training costs extra, complex pricing
Free Tier: 1TB data scanned/month Duration: Always free Limits: SQL queries on S3 data Gotchas: Data transfer costs from S3
Free Tier: 250,000 messages/month, 250,000 registry operations Duration: 12 months Limits: Basic IoT functionality Gotchas: Device Shadow operations count toward limits
AWS charges for data leaving their network. Always use CloudFront or other CDNs to minimize egress costs.
Using EC2 doesn't make EBS free. Each service has separate pricing. Plan storage costs separately.
Some free tier services are region-specific. US East (N. Virginia) offers the most comprehensive free tier.
Advanced services like SageMaker require 12+ months account age. Create accounts early.
- Use t2/t3.micro for development
- Stop instances when not in use
- Use spot instances for non-critical workloads
- Implement auto-scaling carefully
- Use S3 for most storage needs
- Implement lifecycle policies
- Use CloudFront for data delivery
- Compress data before storage
Combine AWS free tiers with other providers:
- AWS Lambda + DynamoDB + Cloudflare CDN
- EC2 + S3 + external databases
- API Gateway + Lambda + external storage
- Monitor usage with Cost Explorer
- Set up billing alerts
- Use Reserved Instances for predictable workloads
- Implement cost allocation tags
- Use AWS for compute, other providers for storage
- Implement data export capabilities
- Design for portability from day one
- Cost Explorer: Analyze spending patterns
- Budgets: Set spending limits and alerts
- Cost Allocation Tags: Track costs by project
- Savings Plans: Commit to usage for discounts
- Enable billing alerts at account creation
- Review costs weekly during free tier period
- Use cost calculators for scaling projections
- Implement resource tagging from day one
Frontend: S3 + CloudFront
Backend: Lambda + API Gateway
Database: DynamoDB
Monitoring: CloudWatch
Cost: $0/month for 12 months Scaling: Add EC2 instances when Lambda limits exceeded
Compute: Lambda
Database: RDS (free tier)
Cache: ElastiCache (limited free tier)
CDN: CloudFront
Cost: $0/month for 12 months Scaling: Upgrade to provisioned throughput
Storage: S3
Processing: Lambda
Analytics: Athena
Monitoring: CloudWatch
Cost: $0/month for 12 months Scaling: Add Glue ETL jobs for complex processing
- Create AWS account with credit card
- Enable billing alerts
- Set up Cost Explorer
- Note account creation date
- Choose US East (N. Virginia) region
- Start with Lambda and S3 for minimal risk
- Monitor usage weekly
- Plan migration strategy before free tier expires
AWS free tier is powerful but complex. Start small, monitor closely, and plan your exit strategy before the 12-month free tier expires.