What's next on AWS Free Tier
Here's what you need to know as you keep building on the Free Tier.
Last updated: July 15, 2026
You've gone from the AWS console to a static portfolio site to a serverless API to an EC2 server to an AI agent to a database. You've set up a development environment, activated additional Free Tier credits, and found your way around the console. That's a lot of AWS across seven tutorials.
In this post, we'll wrap up the Free Tier series. I want to provide a refresher on how costs work, where to find community, and ideas for what to build next.
How costs work on the Free plan
Surprise costs are one big thing that make people nervous about experimenting with any new technology. The previous Free Tier model had stories of someone leaving an EC2 instance running and getting a bill they didn't expect. AWS has changed how this works on the new Free Tier .
A few things worth highlighting:
- You’re protected from costs for 6 months, or when your credits run out, whichever comes first.
- Credits expire 12 months after your account is created.
- 30+ services are always free up to monthly limits on the Free and Paid plans. For example, Lambda gives you 1 million requests per month. DynamoDB gives you 25 GB of storage. These don't expire.
- Other services, like Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon API Gateway, are Free Tier eligible. This means that any usage comes out of your Free Tier credits while you’re on the Free plan.
On the Free Plan, you can’t accidentally get charged. That's the key difference from how things used to work. Now, if you forget to shut something off, you won't wake up to a bill. Your account will be closed if you run out of credits.
One exception to flag is that enabling certain features that require a Paid Plan (like AWS Organizations or IAM Identity Center) can automatically move you to Paid Plan. If you're on Free Plan and something asks you to upgrade or enable Organizations, read the prompt carefully and double check that you are not enabling paid services or features. When in doubt, check against the services listed here .
When the Free plan ends
When your Free plan ends, AWS closes your account automatically unless you upgrade to a Paid Plan. Your data sticks around for 90 days. During that window, you can upgrade and get everything back. After 90 days, it's deleted, data is erased, and you can't recover it.
If you built projects during this series and want to keep them, upgrade before your Free Plan runs out. Paid Plan still includes the always-free services and any leftover credits until they expire.
Keeping an eye on what you spend
Even on the Free Plan, it's a good habit to check the Billing Console once a week while you're learning. Here's where to find things:
- Billing Console dashboard : Your current charges, credit balance, and forecasted end-of-month cost, all on one page.
- AWS Budgets : In the first tutorial , you set up a zero-spend budget to be notified of all charges. Now that you've built a few projects, consider creating a monthly budget that reflects your actual usage. Something like $5 or $10/month gives you room to experiment without worrying about every API call.
- Credits : Your active credits and total amount remaining. This page is useful because it shows when your credits expire. AWS also sends you automatic notifications when your Free Tier credits drop to 50%, 25%, and 10% remaining, so you'll know well in advance when they're running low.
- Cost Explorer : Shows what you're spending, broken down by service and by day or month. Good for catching something you forgot to shut off.
- Free Tier usage page : Shows how much of each free allowance you've used. You might see something like "9 Lambda requests out of 1,000,000 this month," which is reassuring.
AWS Builder Center
builder.aws.com (where you're reading this post) is where AWS puts developer-focused content. The Learn page has lots of information on ways to keep building and growing on AWS.
If a particular project from this series caught your attention, check out its related hashtags or find its topic on the Topics page . For example, if the AI agent project was your favorite, the Agentic AI topic page is where to go next.
Community and learning
You don't have to figure this out alone. Check out the Connect page to find your community. Here are some other places where AWS developers hang out and learn from each other:
- AWS Community Builders : An application-based program where you connect with other builders and get early access to new services.
- AWS User Groups : Local meetups in cities around the world. Good for meeting people who are building on AWS near you.
- AWS Skill Builder : Structured learning paths if you want something more guided. Some are free, some are paid.
- AWS on GitHub : AWS publishes a lot of open-source projects. Reading the code and contributing is one of the best ways to learn how services work under the hood.
What to build next
The best way to learn AWS is to build something you actually want. Pick a problem you have. Start building. You'll learn more from your own projects than from ten tutorials.
This post concludes the AWS Free Tier onboarding series. Everything you built here runs within the Free Tier — no surprise bills, just learning.
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