AWS Free Tier in 2026 — what actually stays free

AWS Free Tier changed significantly on July 15, 2025 — the old “12-month free trial” model was replaced for new accounts with a 6-month plan plus credits. Existing accounts kept the legacy tier. On top of that, AWS began charging for public IPv4 addresses in Feb 2024. If your article on AWS Free Tier is older than that, its numbers are probably outdated. This guide covers the 2026 reality.

The two versions of AWS Free Tier that exist today

Legacy (accounts created before July 15, 2025):

Traditional 12-month free tier still applies
Access to Always Free services with monthly limits
Nothing changed for these accounts

New AWS Free Plan (accounts created on or after July 15, 2025):

$100 credits at signup, up to $200 through onboarding activities
Plan lasts 6 months OR until credits are exhausted, whichever comes first
Account auto-closes when the plan ends
Also includes Always Free services

Always Free services (both plans): 30+ AWS services stay free forever within monthly usage limits, regardless of which plan you’re on.

Always Free services — free forever within limits

These services stay free regardless of account age or plan type, subject to monthly usage limits.

Compute

Lambda — 1 million requests + 400,000 GB-seconds compute per month
DynamoDB — 25 GB storage + 25 read/write capacity units
SNS / SQS — 1 million requests per month
Step Functions — 4,000 state transitions per month

Networking

CloudFront — 1 TB data transfer + 10 million requests per month

AI / ML

Rekognition — 5,000 image analyses per month (first 12 months)
Comprehend — 50,000 units of text per month (first 12 months)
Polly — 5 million standard characters per month (first 12 months)

Monitoring

CloudWatch — 10 custom metrics, 5 GB log ingestion, 1 million API requests
X-Ray — 100,000 traces per month

Storage

Glacier — 10 GB retrieval per month (data storage costs extra)

Always Free service limits are per AWS account, not per region. Once you exceed the monthly quota, standard billing applies.

Legacy 12-month tier (pre-July 2025 accounts only)

If your account was created before July 15, 2025, the traditional 12-month free tier still applies to these services. After 12 months, standard rates kick in.

EC2 — 750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro
S3 — 5 GB standard storage + 20,000 GET + 2,000 PUT requests
RDS — 750 hours/month of db.t2.micro / db.t3.micro
EBS — 30 GB storage + 2 million I/O
Elastic Load Balancer — 750 hours/month
ElastiCache — 750 hours/month of cache.t3.micro
Data Transfer — 15 GB out per month
Route 53 — first hosted zone free for 12 months (0.50 USD/month per zone after)
API Gateway — 1 million API calls per month (first 12 months)

Real cost after 12 months: if leaving these running, a small always-on EC2 + RDS + ELB stack costs around 40 to 80 USD per month.

New AWS Free Plan (post-July 2025 accounts)

New accounts don’t get a 12-month allowance. Instead:

Start with 100 USD credits
Complete onboarding activities (up to 100 USD more)
Credits expire 12 months from account creation
Free Plan status ends after 6 months or when credits hit zero, whichever comes first
Account auto-closes at that point unless you upgrade to a Paid plan

You can use those credits on any AWS service, so it’s more flexible than the old fixed 750-hour allocations. But the runway is shorter — most experimentation projects that used to fit in 12 months now need to fit in 6.

Hidden costs that surprise everyone

1. Public IPv4 addresses — charged since Feb 2024

This is the biggest change most guides miss. Since February 1, 2024, AWS charges 0.005 USD/hour (~3.60 USD/month) for every public IPv4 address, whether attached to a running EC2 instance or sitting idle.

Free tier exception: legacy free tier accounts (pre-July 2025) get 750 hours/month of public IPv4 usage free for the first 12 months.

What this means practically:

Every running EC2 with a public IP costs at least 3.60 USD/month beyond free tier
NAT Gateways, Load Balancers, and VPN connections with public IPs — all charged
New accounts on the AWS Free Plan don’t get the 750-hour IPv4 exemption

2. Data transfer OUT

The second most common surprise. Free tier includes limited outbound bandwidth. Beyond that:

Internet egress: 0.09 USD/GB (US regions), 0.12 USD/GB (many others)
Cross-region: 0.02 USD/GB
Cross-AZ within same region: 0.01 USD/GB per direction

A hobbyist blog serving 1 TB/month costs 90 USD or more just in bandwidth.

3. RDS storage

RDS free tier includes 20 GB storage (legacy accounts only)
Beyond that: 0.115 USD/GB/month for gp2
Backup storage — first 100% of allocated is free, additional charged

4. NAT Gateway

Popular for private subnets. Costs:

0.045 USD/hour (~32 USD/month per gateway)
0.045 USD/GB data processed
Plus 0.005 USD/hour for its public IPv4 address

Not in free tier at all. Common surprise.

5. Support plans

Basic support: free
Developer support: 29 USD/month minimum
Business support: 100 USD/month or 3-10% of AWS bill

Free tier includes only Basic support.

Setting up billing alerts (critical)

Never skip this step. Set alerts BEFORE deploying anything.

AWS Console → Billing → Billing preferences
Enable “Receive Free Tier Usage Alerts”
Enter your email
Go to CloudWatch → Alarms → Create Alarm
Metric: EstimatedCharges (in USD)
Set threshold: 5, 10, 25 USD (three alarms recommended)
Send notification to your email

Now if usage spikes, you get emails before the bill arrives.

What to avoid on free tier

Don’t run these on always-on free tier:

NAT Gateway — expensive, not free
Multiple availability zone deployments — cross-AZ transfer charges
CloudTrail data events — logging every S3 object access
Detailed monitoring — 1-minute EC2 metrics cost extra
VPC endpoints (7.30 USD/month per endpoint)
Multiple public IPv4 addresses — each one is 3.60 USD/month post-2024

Realistic free/cheap stack for a personal project

Given the 2024 IPv4 charges and the 2025 Free Tier restructure, here’s what actually stays cheap for a personal project.

Option A — Static Website (essentially free)

S3 for storage
CloudFront for CDN
Route 53 for DNS (0.50 USD/month after 12 months)
Certificate Manager for SSL (free)
Total: essentially 0 USD for personal traffic (CloudFront’s 1 TB always-free covers most personal blogs)

Option B — Full Stack Web App (legacy accounts only)

1x t3.micro EC2 (running Docker/Node) — free for 12 months, includes 750 hrs public IPv4
1x db.t3.micro RDS — free for 12 months
5 GB S3
CloudFront in front
Total: around 0 USD for first 12 months, then 40 to 80 USD/month + IPv4 charges

Option C — Serverless (works on both plan types)

Lambda for compute (1M requests always free)
DynamoDB for storage (25 GB always free)
API Gateway for HTTP endpoints (first 12 months free, then 3.50 USD per million calls)
CloudFront for CDN (1 TB always free)
Total: often 0 USD for hobbyist traffic, indefinitely

Serverless is the best free-tier fit today because it avoids the always-on EC2 costs and the IPv4 charge entirely.

Alternatives worth comparing

For personal projects, AWS free tier is not always the best deal. Verified 2026 limits:

Provider	Free Compute	Free Bandwidth	Notes
AWS (Always Free)	Lambda 1M req/month	15 GB egress + CloudFront 1 TB	Always Free services never expire
AWS (Legacy 12-mo)	750 hrs t3.micro	15 GB egress	Pre-July 2025 accounts only
AWS (New Free Plan)	100 to 200 USD credits	Included in credits	6 months or credit exhaustion
Cloudflare Pages	Unlimited static requests	Unlimited (unmetered)	500 builds/month; Functions billed via Workers plan
Vercel Hobby	1M function invocations	100 GB/month	Also 1M edge requests, 4 CPU hours
Netlify (legacy)	300 build minutes	100 GB/month	Pre-Sep 2025 accounts
Netlify (new)	300 credits/month	Credits shared with bandwidth	Post-Sep 2025 accounts, unified pool
Oracle Cloud	4 vCPU + 24 GB RAM ARM	10 TB egress	Always Free tier (verify with Oracle)
Google Cloud	1 e2-micro	200 GB egress	Always Free, region-restricted

Fly.io was previously listed as having a free tier. As of late 2024, Fly.io no longer offers a free tier — new users pay from usage.

For blogs and small static sites in 2026, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel Hobby typically beat AWS on both cost and simplicity.

Reproduce this yourself (safely)

Before deploying anything:

Complete the billing alert setup above
Never enter production credit card if just experimenting — use a low-limit card
Delete resources after testing to avoid accidental charges
Note whether your account is legacy or new — the free tier you get depends on this

For learning AWS without risk: use AWS Skill Builder (free courses) or Amazon-provided sandboxes at re:Invent events. These have hard spending limits.

Common surprise-bill scenarios

Left an EC2 instance running for 8 months → around 60 to 100 USD bill (plus IPv4 charges)
CloudFront hit by scraping bot → 500 GB egress = 45 USD
Forgot to delete RDS → around 15 USD/month × months
Set up NAT Gateway “just to try” → 32 USD/month + IPv4
Multiple EIPs allocated but not attached → 3.60 USD each per month

Real AWS bills for someone experimenting without alerts typically range 20 to 200 USD/month unexpectedly.

Bottom line

AWS Free Tier is real but requires attention, and the rules changed twice recently:

Feb 2024: public IPv4 addresses became a paid resource
July 2025: the 12-month free tier was replaced (for new accounts) with a 6-month credit-based plan
Always Free services remain the safest bet — they never expire and cover Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudFront, and 30+ others
Data transfer OUT is still the biggest hidden cost across everything
Billing alerts are mandatory, not optional

For most personal projects in 2026, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel Hobby offer more predictable cost profiles than AWS. Use AWS when you specifically need its services (Lambda, DynamoDB, ML APIs), not for basic web hosting.