AWS Free Tier: What’s Included and How to Use It?

Karishma Kochar

Karishma Kochar

Senior AWS Corporate Trainer

 
The AWS Free Tier is a promotional offering that allows new users to explore and use AWS services at no cost for a limited time. It includes three types of offers: a 12-month free tier, which provides access to popular services like Amazon EC2, S3, and RDS; a always free tier, which includes services like AWS Lambda and DynamoDB with specific usage limits; and trial offers for certain services that provide free access for a limited period. Users can sign up for an AWS account to start using the Free Tier, allowing them to experiment with cloud resources, develop applications, and test services without incurring charges. It’s a valuable resource for developers, startups, and businesses looking to learn about AWS and assess its capabilities.

Understanding the AWS Free Tier

The AWS Free Tier is a fantastic opportunity for beginners and experienced developers to explore Amazon Web Services without immediate costs. By using the AWS Free Tier, users can experiment with different services, like EC2 for virtual servers, S3 for storage, and Lambda for serverless computing, all without upfront expenses. These options provide a limited but valuable resource set, giving users a chance to understand how the AWS ecosystem works. Many projects can be tested and deployed on a small scale, helping users gauge the effectiveness of AWS Free Tier offerings before moving to paid options.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a generous Free Tier to help new users get started with cloud computing. Here we will take a closer look at the types of Free Tier offers and the essentials of setting up an account and understanding its eligibility criteria.

AWS Free Tier | What’s Included and How to Use It | NovelVista Learning Solutions

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AWS Free Tier limits

1. 12-Month Free Tier

  • Amazon EC2: 750 hours of t2.micro or t3.micro instances per month.
  • Amazon S3: 5 GB of standard storage, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests per month.
  • Amazon RDS: 750 hours of db.t2.micro or db.t3.micro instances, plus 20 GB of database storage.
  • Amazon DynamoDB: 25 GB of storage, with up to 200 million requests per month.
  • Amazon CloudFront: 1 TB of data transfer out per month.
  • AWS Lambda: 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.

2. Always Free Tier

  • AWS Lambda: 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.
  • Amazon DynamoDB: 25 GB of storage and up to 200 million requests per month.
  • Amazon S3 Glacier: 10 GB of retrieval per month.
  • Amazon SNS: 1 million notifications per month.
  • AWS CloudWatch: 10 custom metrics and 10 alarms.

3. Trial Offers

  • Specific services like Amazon Connect, Amazon QuickSight, and others may have limited-time trial offers, providing free usage for a specified period (e.g., 12 months).

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Hourly usage in the AWS Free Tier

Some services, like Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Elastic Load Balancing, charge for usage on an hourly basis. The AWS Free Tier for these services provides you with a monthly allotment of hours for the first 12 months.

Some examples:

AWS Free Tier for Amazon EC2 provides you with 750 hours of usage of Linux (any combination of t1.micro and t2.micro instances), plus 750 hours of usage of Windows (any combination of t1.micro and t2.micro instances). To know more, check Amazon Free Tier. How you divide this allotment is up to you. For example, you can run 750 hours of a Linux t2.micro or t1.micro instance with 750 hours of a Windows t2.micro or t1.micro instance each month for the first 12 months. In Regions where t2.micro isn’t available, the t3.micro equivalent is supported under AWS Free Tier.

AWS Free Tier EC2 Usage

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Exploring Core AWS Services Within the Free Tier

Getting started with the AWS Free Tier is simple, as Amazon provides easy access for anyone with a registered account. Users can take advantage of the AWS Free Tier to develop, test, and deploy small-scale applications, perfect for startups or developers wanting to learn cloud services hands-on. This hands-on experience with the AWS Free Tier can be a stepping stone to leveraging more advanced AWS capabilities as projects grow. The AWS Free Tier offers access to a variety of core services which are essential for most cloud-based projects. These include Amazon EC2 for computing power, Amazon S3 for storage, and Amazon RDS for database management. Understanding how to leverage these services can set the foundation for effective cloud computing.

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