Amazon has significantly overhauled its AWS Free Tier program for new customers. They will now get $100 in AWS credits when signing up, plus an additional $100 when completing five specific service activities, each of which credit new customers with $20. Unfortunately, the updated program only gives you a 6-month free trial, compared to the previous 12-month free trial.
The five specific service activities that will net you $20 per activity are launching an EC2 instance, configuring an RDS database, building a Lambda function, using Amazon Bedrock, and setting up an AWS Budget.
When new users sign up to AWS, they can choose between a “Free account plan” and a “Paid account plan”. Customers opting for the free plan will not be charged until they upgrade to paid. The plan will expire after 6 months or when the credits have been used, whichever comes first.
There are also limits on some of the services used by large enterprises such as AWS Marketplace purchases and large dedicated infrastructure offerings are prohibited. These accounts are also ineligible for other promo credits and if customers don’t upgrade at the end of their trial within 90 days, the account will be closed.
If a customer goes with the paid plan, they get immediate access to all AWS services and credits are automatically applied to eligible service usage. Charges will only apply for usage exceeding credits. Unused credits can be used for up to 12 months from initial sign-up and these customers are eligible for other promo credits and discounts.
The Free Plan is likely to be better for students, hobbyists, and quick proof of concepts while the Paid Plan will be better for startups and developers that are ready to scale.
Customers can track their remaining credits in the “Explore AWS” widget in the AWS Management Console and in the “Credits” page in the Billing and Cost Management Console. AWS will also send email and console notifications when 50%, 25%, and 10% of credits remain and at 15, 7, and 2 days before the 6-month free period ends.
The new AWS Free Tier features are generally available in all AWS Regions worldwide. The only exception is that they’re not available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and China Regions (Beijing and Ningxia still have a 12-month free tier). If an AWS account was created before July 15, 2025, it will remain on the legacy Free Tier program.
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