AWS Free Tier — S3 (current, post-2025 restructure)
- Free allowance
- No perpetual S3 storage allowance remains in the current published Free Tier.
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, no phone
- Binding limit
- retention-clampedexpire at 6 months
- Evidence
- reported4 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | No perpetual S3 storage allowance remains in the current published Free Tier. What exists now: up to $200 in credits ($100 at signup + up to $100 for activities), expiring 6 months after account creation, and the account itself 'closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out'. The old 5 GB/12-month S3 allowance is not listed on the current free-tier page or S3 pricing page's Free Tier section, which now describes only the credit model. unit GB; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
6-month account lifetime on the Free plan; credits expire at 6 months (12 if you upgrade to Paid); $200 of credits buys roughly 3-4 TB-months of S3 Standard at ~$0.023/GB-month — a one-shot, not a tier. |
| Binding | retention-clamped a clock, not a quota: bytes leave whether or not a user is finished with them |
| Identity | card not published |
| Egress | Data transfer out from AWS Regions to the internet: first 100 GB/month free for all customers (announced 2021, still the standing allowance). CloudFront separately gives 1 TB/month free egress + 10M requests, no longer time-limited — but that is a CDN allowance bolted onto a paid origin. free allowance: 100 GB per month |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | 6-month account lifetime on the Free plan; credits expire at 6 months (12 if you upgrade to Paid); $200 of credits buys roughly 3-4 TB-months of S3 Standard at ~$0.023/GB-month — a one-shot, not a tier. (180 days) |
| Interface | s3-compatible, rclone, cli part of the text of Free tier, above |
| Tooling | S3 API, rclone 's3', aws-cli; CloudFront in front for the 1 TB egress allowance. |
| Composes with | AWS explicitly aggregates usage across an AWS Organization, so claiming credits across several accounts fails (Free Tier Terms: 'You will not be eligible for any Offers if you or your entity create(s) more than one account'). A second account does not carry a second allowance. |
| Reliability | The most reliable infrastructure here, but the programme is now a time-boxed credit grant, not free storage. Anything still stored when the Free plan closes is at risk. |
Evidence 4
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/free/ | 'up to $200 over 6 months ... The account closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out' |
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/free/free-tier-faqs/ | 'Free Tier credits expire 6 months from the date you create your AWS account'; 'You cannot extend your Free plan beyond 6 months' |
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/free/terms/ | Organization-level aggregation and ineligibility when several accounts exist |
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-free-tier-data-transfer-expansi | 100 GB/month region egress + 1 TB/month CloudFront, no 12-month limit |
More fields 1
{
"dead_end": {
"failure_class": "quota",
"why": "No perpetual S3 storage allowance remains in the current published Free Tier. What exists now: up to $200 in credits ($100 at signup + up to $100 for activities), expiring 6 months after account creation, and the account itself 'closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out'. The old 5 GB/12-month S3 allowance is not listed on the current free-tier page or S3 pricing page's Free Tier section, which now describes only the credit model.",
"retry_when": null,
"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"
}
}Unknown values 4
$.identity_cost.detailboilerplate$.per_object_cap.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.per_object_cap.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read