Top 5 Tips for Keeping a Learner AWS Account on Free Tier at Minimum Costs
Watch your storage like a hawk
- EBS → Stay within 30 GB total for all volumes combined.
- S3 → Keep under 5 GB or set lifecycle rules to auto-delete old files.
- Delete unused volumes and snapshots — stopping an instance isn’t enough.
- Pro tip: Use one volume per instance when possible.
Track your compute hours
- 750 hours/month = one free-tier-eligible instance running 24/7.
- More instances = hours add up across all VMs.
- Run extra VMs for short bursts and stop when not in use.
Avoid “premium” services unless testing briefly
- Some AWS services have no free tier: NAT Gateways, Load Balancers, some RDS setups,
Provisioned IOPS volumes. - Spin up, test, and delete the same day to avoid charges.
Clean up aggressively
- Delete unused EBS volumes, snapshots, AMIs, idle Elastic IPs.
- Remove old CloudWatch logs.
- AWS charges for provisioned resources, even if idle.
Use the AWS Budgets & Billing Alarms
- Set a $1–$2 monthly budget alert in AWS Billing → Budgets.
- Alerts you early if you exceed free tier limits.
- Prevents surprises like a forgotten NAT Gateway burning $20/month.
Extra learner hack: Keep one main free-tier t3.micro/t2.micro running 24/7 for your baseline lab, and spin up larger instances only when actively testing — delete them afterward. Your $100 credit will then go only toward high-power bursts, not slow leaks.