AWS Free Tier 2026: What You Get Free, Limits, and Hidden Costs

Introduction

AWS Free Tier gives you access to 100+ cloud services at no cost. Whether you're learning Terraform, testing a startup idea, or studying for AWS certifications, the Free Tier lets you use real AWS infrastructure without a credit card charge — as long as you stay within the limits.

This guide covers every Free Tier category, the most useful services with their exact limits, and how to avoid surprise bills.

Three Types of Free Tier

AWS organizes free offerings into three categories:

Always Free Services (Never Expire)

These stay free forever, regardless of when you created your account:

Compute

Storage

Networking & CDN

Monitoring & Management

Developer Tools

AI & Machine Learning

12 Months Free (New Accounts Only)

Available for 12 months after account creation:

Most Popular 12-Month Services

EC2 Free Tier Details

The most popular Free Tier service. Key details:

• 750 hours/month = enough to run 1 instance 24/7, or multiple instances that total 750 hours
• t2.micro or t3.micro (depending on region) — 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM
• Linux or Windows (Windows counts the same hours)
• 30 GB EBS storage included (General Purpose SSD)
• Applies to On-Demand instances only (not Spot or Reserved)

# Terraform example: Free Tier EC2 instance
resource "aws_instance" "free_tier" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"  # Amazon Linux 2
  instance_type = "t2.micro"               # Free Tier eligible
 
  tags = {
    Name = "free-tier-instance"
  }
}

RDS Free Tier Details

• 750 hours/month of db.t2.micro or db.t3.micro
• 20 GB General Purpose SSD storage
• 20 GB automated backup storage
• Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle BYOL, SQL Server Express

# Terraform example: Free Tier RDS
resource "aws_db_instance" "free_tier" {
  engine               = "mysql"
  engine_version       = "8.0"
  instance_class       = "db.t3.micro"
  allocated_storage    = 20
  storage_type         = "gp2"
  db_name              = "mydb"
  username             = "admin"
  password             = var.db_password
  skip_final_snapshot  = true
}

Free Trials (Limited Duration)

Short-term trials for specific services. The timer starts when you first use the service:

How to Avoid Surprise Bills

1. Set Up Billing Alerts

# Terraform: Create a billing alarm
resource "aws_cloudwatch_metric_alarm" "billing" {
  alarm_name          = "billing-alarm-10-dollars"
  comparison_operator = "GreaterThanThreshold"
  evaluation_periods  = 1
  metric_name         = "EstimatedCharges"
  namespace           = "AWS/Billing"
  period              = 21600  # 6 hours
  statistic           = "Maximum"
  threshold           = 10
  alarm_description   = "Alert when charges exceed $10"
 
  alarm_actions = [aws_sns_topic.billing.arn]
 
  dimensions = {
    Currency = "USD"
  }
}

2. Use AWS Budgets

Go to AWS Billing → Budgets → Create Budget and set a monthly budget of $0 or $1. AWS will email you when you approach the limit.

3. Common Gotchas

• Elastic IPs: Free only when attached to a running instance. Idle EIPs cost $0.005/hour ($3.60/month)
• EBS Snapshots: Not included in Free Tier. Charged at $0.05/GB-month
• Data Transfer: Outbound data beyond free allowances is charged
• Multi-AZ RDS: Not eligible for Free Tier (doubles the hours)
• NAT Gateway: Not in Free Tier ($0.045/hour = $32/month)
• Forgetting to terminate: Running instances after your 12 months expire

4. Monitor Your Usage

Check the Free Tier Usage Dashboard at: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/freetier

This shows percentage used for each Free Tier service.

Using AWS Free Tier with Terraform

Terraform is the best way to manage Free Tier resources — you can create, track, and destroy everything with code:

# Complete Free Tier stack
provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}
 
# VPC (free)
resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"
  tags       = { Name = "free-tier-vpc" }
}
 
# Subnet (free)
resource "aws_subnet" "public" {
  vpc_id     = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block = "10.0.1.0/24"
  tags       = { Name = "free-tier-subnet" }
}
 
# EC2 (750 hours/month free)
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  subnet_id     = aws_subnet.public.id
  tags          = { Name = "free-tier-web" }
}
 
# S3 Bucket (5 GB free)
resource "aws_s3_bucket" "data" {
  bucket = "my-free-tier-bucket-unique-name"
  tags   = { Name = "free-tier-bucket" }
}
 
# Destroy everything when done:
# terraform destroy

Pro tip: Always run terraform destroy when you're done experimenting. Forgotten resources are the #1 cause of unexpected AWS bills.

Links

• AWS Free Tier page
• Free Tier FAQ
• AWS Pricing Calculator

Hands-On Courses

Learn by doing with interactive courses on CopyPasteLearn:

• Terraform for Beginners course on CopyPasteLearn

Conclusion

The AWS Free Tier is the best way to learn cloud computing and Terraform hands-on without spending money. Use the Always Free tier for Lambda, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch. Use the 12-month tier for EC2, S3, and RDS. Set up billing alerts on day one, and always terraform destroy your test infrastructure when you're done. The Free Tier gives you enough to build real applications — just stay within the limits.