Track your Free Tier usage for Amazon EC2
When you create your AWS account, you can get started with Amazon EC2 for free using the
AWS Free Tier
Free Tier benefits before and after July 15, 2025
The following table compares your Free Tier benefits based on your AWS account creation date:
| Free Tier benefit | Account created before July 15, 2025 | Account created on or after July 15, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Instance types marked Free tier eligible |
|
|
| AMIs marked Free tier eligible | Check for AMIs marked Free tier eligible. | Check for AMIs marked Free tier eligible. |
| Usage limit | Restricted to usage limits, after which you are billed pay-as-you-go rates. |
Receive USD $100 sign-up credit and earn up to $100 in additional credits. |
| Free Tier duration | Your Free Tier lasts for 12 months from the date you create your account. During this time, if you exceed your Free Tier usage limits, you are billed pay-as-you-go rates. | Your Free Tier lasts for 6 months from the date you created your account, or when your credits are used up, whichever happens first. You can't exceed your Free Tier limits. |
To list the instance types that are free tier eligible
Use the describe-instance-types command with the
free-tier-eligible filter.
aws ec2 describe-instance-types \ --filters Name=free-tier-eligible,Values=true \ --query "InstanceTypes[*].[InstanceType]" \ --output text | sort
To list the AMIs that are free tier eligible
Use the describe-images
command with the free-tier-eligible filter.
aws ec2 describe-images \ --filters Name=free-tier-eligible,Values=true \ --query "Images[*].[ImageId]" \ --output text | sort
Track Free Tier usage for accounts created before July 15, 2025
Note
This section only applies to Free Tier users who created AWS accounts before July 15, 2025. If you created your account on or after July 15, 2025, see Tracking your AWS Free Tier usage in the AWS Billing User Guide.
If you created your account before July 15, 2025, you can use Amazon EC2 without incurring
charges if you've been an AWS customer for less than 12 months and you stay within
the AWS Free Tier usage limits. It's important to track your Free Tier usage to
avoid billing surprises. If you exceed the Free Tier limits, you'll incur standard
pay-as-go charges. For more information, see AWS Free Tier
Note
If you've been an AWS customer for more than 12 months, you're no longer eligible for Free Tier usage and you won't see the EC2 Free Tier box that is described in the following procedure.
To track your Free Tier usage
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Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/
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In the navigation pane, choose EC2 Dashboard.
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Find the EC2 Free Tier box (at top right).
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In the EC2 Free Tier box, check your Free Tier usage, as follows:
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Under EC2 Free Tier offers in use, take note of the warnings:
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End of month forecast – This warns that you will incur charges this month if you continue with your current usage pattern.
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Exceeds Free Tier – This warns that you've exceeded your Free Tier limits and you're already incurring charges.
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Under Offer usage (monthly), take note of your usage of Linux instances, Windows instances, and EBS storage. The percentage indicates how much of your Free Tier limits you've used this month. If you're at 100%, you will incur charges for further use.
Note
This information appears only after you've created an instance. However, usage information is not updated in real time; it's updated three times a day.
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To avoid incurring further charges, delete any resources that are either incurring charges now, or will incur charges if you exceed your Free Tier limit usage.
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For the instructions to delete your instance, see Terminate Amazon EC2 instances.
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To check if you have resources in other Regions that might be incurring charges, in the EC2 Free Tier box, choose View Global EC2 resources to open the EC2 Global View. For more information, see View resources across Regions using Amazon EC2 Global View.
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To view your resource usage for all AWS services under the AWS Free Tier, at the bottom of the EC2 Free Tier box, choose View all AWS Free Tier offers. For more information, see Trying services using AWS Free Tier in the AWS Billing User Guide.
