Everything you need to know to get started with AWS Free Tier
POV: You just signed up for a new AWS account under the Free plan, and you have $100 in credits. What do you do next?
Last updated: May 6, 2026
Before you start building, it’s worth taking 15 minutes to understand what the Free Tier actually includes, how to find your way around the console, and a few setup steps that are easy to skip but pay off down the line.
If you haven't created a Free Tier account yet, start here !
What's in your account right now
When you created your AWS account, you chose the Free plan. Here's what that includes:
- Protection from overages: Your credit card doesn’t get charged on the Free plan. More details below.
- $100 in credits, already in your account. These are yours to spend on AWS services that are eligible under the Free plan as you learn. To give you a sense of how far that goes: a basic server option (a t3.micro EC2 instance ) costs $0.0104/hour in US East (N. Virginia), so $100 can cover over 9,600 hours of compute on that instance. A more heavy duty option (a m7i-flex.large) costs $0.09576/hour, which costs about $70 per month running 24/7. Check out the other services available on the Free plan here .
- Up to $100 more in credits you can earn by completing activities in the console. There are five tasks in the "Explore AWS" widget, each worth $20. We'll get to one of those (setting up a budget alert) later in this article.
- 30+ services with always-free usage tiers . For example, Lambda gives you 1 million free requests per month. DynamoDB gives you 25 GB of storage. These monthly allowances don't expire and don't eat into your credits.
- Up to 6 months on the Free plan. Your account automatically closes after 6 months or when your credits run out (whichever comes first). You can upgrade to the Paid plan if you want to keep going, and your remaining credits carry over.
The details worth understanding
I opened a new Free Tier account recently, and here are some of the details from the FAQs that I think can be easy to miss when you first sign up.
You don’t get charged on the Free plan
This is the most important thing to know and the biggest difference from the previous version of the Free Tier. On the new Free plan, if you forget to shut something off, the charges will go to your Free Tier credits and not to your credit card.
With the previous Free Tier, you had to monitor your usage and stay within Free Tier limits. For example, you would get 750 hours of free EC2 usage per month, but then you would be charged if you went over.
The new Free plan protects you from unexpected overage charges by closing your account when you run out of credits or after 6 months, whichever comes first. You will receive email notifications when you have 50%, 25%, and 10% of your Free Tier credits remaining.
Be careful not to activate paid-only services
Enabling certain services or features that require a Paid plan can move you from the Free plan to the Paid plan. For instance, if you try to go to the Amazon Macie console, you will a screen that looks like this. This is because Amazon Macie is only available on the Paid plan. You can use the back button in the browser to safely navigate away.
On the Free plan, make sure you don’t enable AWS Organizations, set up an AWS Control Tower landing zone, or enable IAM Identity Center. If you do, your credits expire immediately and your account is automatically converted to the Paid plan.
When in doubt, check against the services listed on the AWS Free Tier page and double check the FAQs as well.
Credits expire after 1 year
Your credits expire 12 months after your account is created, regardless of which plan you're on. For learning projects, that's plenty of time, but it's worth knowing that your credits won't last forever.
When the Free plan ends
Your Free plan expires at 6 months or when your credits run out, whichever comes first. After that, AWS closes your account automatically unless you upgrade to the Paid plan. Your data sticks around for 90 days. During that window, you can upgrade and get everything back. After 90 days, it's gone. Account deleted, data erased, no recovery.
If you build projects during this time and want to keep them, you can upgrade before the 90 days runs out if you want to keep them running in your account. The Paid plan still includes the always-free service tiers and any leftover credits (until they expire).
Finding your way around the console
The AWS Console Home page can feel like a lot the first time you see it. Here's a quick guide on how to get around.
Service menu (top left): Every AWS service lives here. You won't need most of them right now, but this is where you'll find services like EC2, S3, and Lambda.
Unified search (top bar): The fastest way to get anywhere. Type the name of a service, a setting, or even a feature, and it'll take you there. I use this more than the service menu.
Unified settings (top right): Language, visual mode, default region. Worth checking once so the console feels like yours.
Region selector (top right, next to your account name): AWS runs in regions around the world. The region you're in determines where your resources live. If you create something in us-east-1 and then switch to us-west-2, you won't see it. It's not gone; you're just looking in the wrong place.
Set up a budget alert (and earn $20)
Even though the Free plan protects you from charges, it's a good habit to set up a budget alert. It takes two minutes, and it earns you $20 in additional credits.
- Look for the Explore AWS widget on your console dashboard (it might take a few minutes to appear on a brand new account)
- Click Set up cost budget using AWS Budgets
- Select Use a template, pick the zero spend budget, and give it a name
- Add your email for notifications
- Choose Create budget
Then head back to the Explore AWS widget. It might take up to 30 minutes, but you should see the $20 credit applied eventually.
This is a zero-spend budget, so it'll notify you if anything gets charged at all. I like to set this up so that I'm notified immediately when I'm using my credits. When you set up a resource that uses credits, like an EC2 server, you'll should see a notification come through that you've used up some credits and “exceeded the budget.” For example, when I left a t3.micro instance running one weekend, it cost about 30 cents, which was deducted from my credits. This is an example of the email notification I got:
Once you've built a few projects, you might want to create a monthly budget with a more realistic threshold ($5 or $10) so you have room to experiment without getting budget notifications all the time.
Secure your account
The user you've been using so far is likely your root user. It has full access to everything in your account, but there are only a handful of tasks that actually require it. For everything else, you should use a separate IAM user in your Free plan account. Following root user best practices means two things: adding MFA to your root user, and creating a non-root user for daily work.
Add MFA to your root user
- Use the unified search bar to find IAM and open it
- You'll see a security recommendation banner telling you to add MFA. Click Add MFA
- Choose your MFA device . I went with an authenticator app, but you can also use a passkey, security key, or hardware TOTP token
- Scan the QR code with your phone's authenticator app and enter the codes
You'll land back on the IAM Dashboard with a green checkmark confirming MFA is enabled.
Remember to take good care of your MFA device. AWS recommends activating multiple MFA devices in case a device is lost or broken. Learn more here .
Create an IAM user
If you're still in the IAM Dashboard:
- Click Users in the left sidebar, then Create user
- Name your user, check the box for console access, set a custom password (uncheck "user must create a new password")
- On the permissions page, choose Attach policies directly and select AdministratorAccess
- Download the CSV with your login credentials
- Sign out as root and sign back in as your new IAM user
- Add MFA to this user too (same steps as above)
From now on, sign into your account with this IAM user for your day-to-day work. Keep the root user credentials somewhere safe and only pull them out when you really need them.
Keeping an eye on your usage
A few places in the console worth checking on periodically:
- Credits balance: Billing Console → Billing and Payments → Credits . This page shows how many credits you have left and when they expire.
- Free Tier usage: Billing Console → Cost and Usage Analysis → Free Tier . This page shows how much of each free allowance you've used in the current month. You might see something like "9 Lambda requests out of 1,000,000 this month," which is reassuring.
- Cost Explorer: Billing Console → Cost Explorer . This is enabled once you’ve accessed the Billing Console. It shows what you're spending, broken down by service and by day or month.
What's next
In the next post , you’ll learn how to set up your development environment so you're ready to start building projects on AWS.
Post #1 in the Free Tier onboarding email series. Everything in this series runs within the AWS Free Tier .
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