AWS Free Tier vs Paid Account
The AWS Free Tier includes three types of offers: "Always Free" services that never expire, "12 Months Free" services available for the first year, and short-term free trials for specific services.
Always Free examples: Lambda (1M requests/month), DynamoDB (25GB storage), CloudWatch (10 custom metrics), SNS (1M notifications). These services remain free indefinitely regardless of account age.
12-Month Free examples: EC2 t2.micro (750 hours/month), S3 (5GB), RDS (750 hours db.t2.micro), CloudFront (50GB data transfer). These expire exactly 12 months after account creation.
When to upgrade to a paid account: (1) Your 12-month free period expired and you still use EC2/RDS/CloudFront. (2) Your workload outgrew free tier limits. (3) You need services without free tier offerings. (4) You need reliable performance guarantees — free tier instances are burstable/shared.
The fastest upgrade path is buying a pre-loaded AWS credit account — credits from $1,000 to $100,000 cover months of infrastructure without a personal credit card commitment.
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