AWS Free Tier FAQs – How to use AWS Cloud Services for Free

General

Q: What is the difference between Personal and Professional accounts? Which account should I choose while signing up?

Professional accounts are accounts that are created for a business or at an enterprise level, whereas Personal accounts are created for learning and experimenting with AWS services. We recommend opting in for a Professional account for managing production workloads and business critical dependencies. For all other activities, we recommend signing up for a Personal account.

Q: What is ‘AWS account name’ found on AWS sign-up page used for?

‘AWS account name’ is the name of your account which will show up on the AWS Management Console. It is possible to change the AWS account name later in the AWS Management Console if you choose to.

Q: Why do you need a contact address as well as a billing address while signing up?

We use your contact address to inform you about any updates to your account, new product announcements, AWS events, and any fraudulent activities that might impact your account. We use your billing address to validate your payment information and to inform you about details related to your account usage and cost.

Q: How much does AWS cost?

There is no cost for signing up with AWS and you only get charged for what you use. On creating AWS account, you get a discount called AWS Free Tier to try and experiment with the service. The pricing is calculated based on the amount of services you consume beyond the free tier limit , and once you stop using these services, there are no additional costs or termination fees.