AWS Free Tier (web services free tier)
- Free allowance
- Up to USD 200 in credits over 6 months: USD 100 on signup and up to USD 100 more for completing activities; the account closes after 6 months or when the credits run out
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- retention-clampedthe account closes 6 months after opening or when credits run out, whichever comes first
- Evidence
- documented5 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-25checked 2026-10-25 (live); stale on 2026-11-25
| Free tier | up to USD 200 in credits over 6 months: USD 100 on signup and up to USD 100 more for completing activities; the account closes after 6 months or when the credits run out unit mixed; metered on wall-clock; there is no always-free EC2 shape for a new account in 2026 |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
the always-free list covers services such as Lambda request counts, not a running VM |
| Binding | retention-clamped the 6-month window ends the account; every always-free row inside it expires with it |
| Identity | email no card for the Free plan for most new customers: 'Most new customers will not be required to provide a payment method to get started. In some cases, we may ask for additional verification to protect your account.'; an email plus an existing Google or GitHub sign-in is enough; the Free plan is USD 100 of credits at signup plus up to USD 100 more over 6 months, and the account closes itself at 6 months or when the credits run out |
| Egress | not part of the free plan terms read; standard EC2 egress applies past any allowance |
| Retention | the account closes on its own 6 months after it opens or when the credits run out (180 days) |
| Interface | ssh EC2 API, CLI, console; SSH keys chosen at launch |
| Tooling | the AWS CLI, SDKs, Terraform; a real VM with a public IP |
| Composes with | six months of a t3-class VM and then a closed account; nothing to build on |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | The single most-repeated stale fact in the free-tier discourse: there is no always-free EC2 shape for a new account. The credits are real and they end. AWS's own signup page now states the opposite for the Free plan, and the free page confirms the plan is USD 100 plus up to USD 100 over 6 months with the account closing itself at the end. What is NOT established: whether the card is demanded later for a specific service, and what the 'additional verification' consists of, since no signup was attempted. |
| Evidence note | documented Payment facts re-read on 2026-10-24: the card types, the hold and the identity gate each come from a first-party page quoted in evidence[]. |
Evidence 5
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | aws.amazon.com/free/ | USD 100 in credits immediately and up to USD 100 more; up to USD 200 over 6 months |
| 2026-10-22 | aws.amazon.com/free/ | 'The account closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out, whichever comes first.' |
| 2026-10-24 | aws.amazon.com/start-here/ | quoted: 'Fast sign up: Create an account with a sign-in method you already have, such as Google or GitHub. No credit card required to start for most new customers.' |
| 2026-10-24 | aws.amazon.com/start-here/ | quoted from the raw HTML, because the text extractor drops the FAQ block: 'Do I need a credit card to sign up? Most new customers will not be required to provide a payment method to get started. In some cases, we may ask for additional verification to protect your account.' |
| 2026-10-24 | aws.amazon.com/free/ | quoted: 'When you create a new AWS Free Tier account, you get $100 in credits immediately. As you explore key services, you can earn up to $100 more. That's up to $200 over 6 months ... The account closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out, whichever comes first.' |
More fields 9
{
"shape": null,
"billing_model": "allocated",
"session_cap": null,
"keep_rate": {
"value": 1.0,
"basis": "a running instance bills against the credit",
"source": "https://aws.amazon.com/free/"
},
"persistent_storage": null,
"network_out": {
"allow_outbound": true,
"allow_inbound_listen": true,
"ports": "all through a security group",
"static_ip": "an elastic IP",
"ipv6": true,
"per_session_bytes": null
},
"free_tier_kind": "one-time-credit",
"history_note": null,
"payment_methods": {
"card_at_signup": "no",
"debit": "not-applicable",
"prepaid": "not-applicable",
"virtual": "not-applicable",
"hold_amount": null,
"hold_detail": "no card, so no hold",
"identity": "email or an existing Google/GitHub sign-in; additional verification at AWS's discretion",
"source_url": "https://aws.amazon.com/start-here/",
"read_on": "2026-10-24"
}
}Unknown values 2
$.per_object_cap.statedthe field does not apply to this kind of offer$.reliability_notenothing of this kind was observed