AWS Free Tier explained: what's free in 2026

Quick answer

The AWS Free Tier has three categories: 12-months-free (limited to first year, includes 750 EC2 hours and 5 GB S3); always-free (permanent, includes 1M Lambda requests/month and 25 GB DynamoDB); and trial offers (one-time credits for specific services). The always-free tier is the part most relevant for production workloads — Lambda, DynamoDB, SNS, SQS, CloudFront, and CloudWatch all have meaningful permanent free allotments.

The AWS Free Tier is more nuanced than the marketing suggests. There are three distinct categories, each with its own rules, and they don't always combine in obvious ways. For developers building hobby projects, the free tier covers a lot. For production workloads, knowing which parts are permanent versus temporary matters. This post breaks down each category with the specific limits.

The three categories

12 months free

Applies for 12 months after the AWS account is created. After that, normal pricing kicks in. Major items:

EC2: 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro (Linux or Windows). Enough to run one instance continuously.
RDS: 750 hours/month of db.t2.micro or db.t3.micro. Enough for a single small database.
EBS: 30 GB of EBS general-purpose SSD storage, plus 2M I/Os.
S3: 5 GB of S3 Standard storage, 20,000 GET requests, 2,000 PUT requests.
ELB: 750 hours/month of Application Load Balancer plus 15 LCUs.
Data transfer: 100 GB outbound to internet from all services combined.
VPC: 750 hours of NAT Gateway (limited free tier in early account stages).

The 12-month tier is generous enough to run a small production workload for a year. After 12 months, all of these revert to on-demand pricing and the bill jumps if you don't downsize.

Always free

Permanent. Applies to every AWS account forever, regardless of age. These are the parts that matter most for established production accounts:

Lambda: 1 million requests/month plus 400,000 GB-seconds of compute.
DynamoDB: 25 GB storage plus 25 read/write capacity units (provisioned mode) or 2.5M read/2.5M write request units (on-demand).
SNS: 1M publishes per month.
SQS: 1M requests per month.
CloudFront: 1 TB outbound data transfer per month plus 10M HTTP/HTTPS requests.
CloudWatch: 1M API requests, 10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 5 GB log ingestion.
Secrets Manager: 30-day free trial for new customers (then $0.40/secret/month). Not strictly "always free".
X-Ray: 100,000 traces recorded, 1M traces scanned per month.
EventBridge: Default event bus is free; custom buses bill per event.
Glue Data Catalog: 1M objects free.
Step Functions: 4,000 state transitions per month (Standard workflows).
Cognito: 50,000 monthly active users.

For a small production app using Lambda + DynamoDB + SNS/SQS + CloudFront, the always-free tier can cover real load. A web app with under 1M requests/month and 25 GB of database storage pays nothing for those services.

Trial offers

One-time credits for specific services. These are time-limited from first use of the service, not from account creation:

SageMaker Studio: 250 hours/month of t3.medium for 2 months.
Inspector: 90 days free trial.
Macie: 30 days free trial of all features.
Detective: 30 days free.
GuardDuty: 30 days free trial.

Trial offers reset only for new account types; existing accounts with the trial expired don't get reset.

The 2025+ free tier model

In 2025, AWS rolled out a new model for new accounts that replaces the classic 12-months-free with a credit-based system:

New accounts get $100 to $200 in credits to spend over 6 months.
Always-free tiers still apply (Lambda, DynamoDB, etc. don't consume credits).
After credits expire, normal pricing applies immediately.

For existing accounts (created before the change), the classic 12-months-free still applies. For new accounts in 2026, expect the credit model. Check the current AWS Free Tier page for the latest terms.

What the Free Tier covers in real cost terms

For a typical small application:

Lambda + API Gateway: ~1M requests/month at 200ms duration, 512 MB memory. Lambda is free. API Gateway HTTP API at 1M requests is ~$1.00.
DynamoDB: 10 GB storage, 100K reads, 100K writes per month. Free.
S3: 5 GB Standard, modest request volume. Free for 12 months, then ~$0.12/month.
CloudFront: 100 GB data, 1M requests. Free (well under always-free thresholds).

Total monthly cost for a small serverless app: $0-$3/month for the first 12 months, $5-$10/month after. The always-free tiers carry Lambda, DynamoDB, SNS/SQS, CloudFront forever.

What's NOT in the Free Tier (and surprises people)

Common services that have NO meaningful free tier:

NAT Gateway: No free tier. $0.045/hour + $0.045/GB processed from day one.
EKS: No free tier. $0.10/hour cluster fee from day one.
Route 53 hosted zones: $0.50/zone/month from day one.
Secrets Manager (after trial): $0.40/secret/month.
Data transfer between AZs: $0.01/GB always applies.
Elastic IPs not attached to a running instance: $0.005/hour.
Detached EBS volumes: No free tier; bills continuously.

The most common "I just signed up and got a $200 bill" scenarios involve NAT Gateway (no free tier, expensive per-GB), EKS (no free tier, $73/month minimum), or forgotten EIPs and EBS volumes.

How to track Free Tier usage

Three tools work well:

Free Tier Dashboard

Billing console → "Free Tier" tab. Shows current usage vs limit for each service. Updated daily.

AWS Budgets with free-tier alerts

Create a budget with "Track free tier usage" enabled. Get email notifications when you hit 50%, 80%, 100% of any limit. Free to set up.

C3X estimates with free-tier applied

c3x applies known always-free tiers to estimates. For per-resource details, see the catalog pages — each one documents the applicable free tier.

FAQ

Is the AWS Free Tier really free?

Yes, but with three categories that work differently. '12 months free' applies only during the first year after account creation (750 EC2 hours/month, 5 GB S3, etc.). 'Always free' is permanent and applies to every account forever (1M Lambda requests/month, 25 GB DynamoDB storage, etc.). 'Trial offers' are one-time credits for specific services (e.g., 750 hours of SageMaker Studio).

What stays free forever on AWS?

The most useful always-free tiers: 1M Lambda requests + 400,000 GB-seconds per month, 25 GB DynamoDB storage, 1M SNS publishes, 1M SQS requests, 50 GB CloudFront data transfer, 1M CloudWatch API requests, 10 custom metrics. These apply to every account forever, regardless of age.

What's free for the first 12 months only?

The bulk of the EC2-related free tier. 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro, 30 GB of EBS storage, 750 hours of ALB, 5 GB of S3 Standard storage, 750 hours of RDS db.t2.micro or db.t3.micro, 100 GB outbound data transfer to internet. These expire 12 months after account creation.

Do new AWS accounts get extended free tier in 2026?

AWS introduced a new free tier model in 2025 with $100-200 of credits for new accounts to spend over 6 months, plus the always-free services. The classic 12-month free tier still exists for many services but the credit-based model is becoming the default for new accounts. Check current AWS docs for the latest.

How do I avoid going over the free tier?

Set up AWS Budgets with free-tier alerts. The console has a 'Budgets' section with a 'Track free tier usage' option that emails you when you approach the limit. Use AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for surprise charges. Tag everything so you know what's running.

Does C3X account for Free Tier in estimates?

Yes for the most common services. The first 1M Lambda requests, 400K GB-seconds, 25 GB DynamoDB, 5 GB S3 Standard, 1M SNS publishes are all deducted from estimates for the first applicable resource. Tier exhaustion across multiple resources isn't always accurate; the per-account free tier is shared across all resources.

How to actually use the Free Tier well

For a hobby project or learning AWS:

Stay serverless. Lambda + DynamoDB + API Gateway + CloudFront can run a small app for free indefinitely.
Avoid NAT Gateway. Use Lambda's outbound access via VPC NAT only when necessary; for most workloads, Lambda outside a VPC works fine.
Set budget alerts at $1, $5, $10. Catches surprise bills early.
For an EKS or RDS-based app, expect to pay even on the free tier. EKS has no free option.

For estimating real costs on a workload that uses the Free Tier, see how to estimate AWS costs from Terraform. Each catalog page (e.g., aws_lambda_function) documents the applicable free tier.