Control Your AWS Costs
Introduction
Implementation
Explore the AWS Free Tier
1. Access the AWS Free Tier page
Open the Free Tier page, so you can keep this step-by-step guide open. On the AWS Free Tier page, under the AWS Free Tier Details header, choose the 12 months free link.

2. Explore 12 months free offers
These free tier offers are only available to new AWS customers, and are available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date. When your 12 month free usage term expires or if your application use exceeds the tiers, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go service rates (see each service page for full pricing details).
Notable offers for the first 12 months following your AWS account sign-up include some level of free usage for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and many other useful services.

3. Access the Always free page
On the AWS Free Tier page, choose the Always free link to view the Always free offers.

4. Explore Always free offers
As the name suggests, these free tier offers do not automatically expire at the end of your 12-month AWS Free Tier term and are available to all AWS customers.
Notable Always free offers include some level of free usage for AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon CloudWatch, and many other useful services.

5. Access the Free trials page
On the AWS Free Tier page, choose the Free trials link to view the Free trials offers.

6. Explore trial offers
Trial offers allow you to use a service for a specified period of time or number of operations.
Notable trial offers include Amazon SageMaker, Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Redshift, and many other useful services.

Sign up for AWS (or sign in)
There is no additional charge associated with using the AWS Billing Console for this tutorial.
The resources you create in this tutorial are Free Tier eligible.
Already have an account? Sign-in
Review your spend and Free Tier usage
In this step, you will use the AWS Billing Console to review your overall AWS spend and Free Tier usage.
1. Access the billing dashboard
After you have logged in to your account, from the account menu, choose Billing Dashboard.

2. Review your billing dashboard
Once you reach the AWS Billing Dashboard page, you can view a summary of your month-to-date costs in the AWS Summary section, as well as the cost trend for your top five services for the most recent three to six closed billing periods in the Cost trend by top five services section.

3. Access all your Free Tier usage
To dive deeper into your Free Tier eligible usage, choose Free Tier from the left navigation pane.

4. Analyze all your Free Tier usage
In the Summary section on the AWS Free Tier page, all of your usage of services in the Free Tier are listed. In addition to your Current usage, your forecasted service usage by the end of the month is detailed in the Forecasted usage column.
In the example screenshot, note that the forecasted usage of EC2 is 2 GB-mo. Exceeding the limit of the Free Tier generally results in a billable charge.

5. Modify your AWS Free Tier Usage Limit email alerts
By default, most accounts are automatically opted in to receive AWS Free Tier Usage Limit email alerts when their service usage exceeds 85% of a given Free Tier usage limit.
To change who gets these email alerts, choose Billing Preferences from the left navigation bar.
To opt other people in to receive Free Tier Usage Alerts, in the Email Address field, add their email address and choose Save preferences.

Set up a cost budget
In this step, you will set up a cost budget in the AWS Billing Console using AWS Budgets. As part of your cost budget, you will set up three notifications: one for if your costs reach 80% of your budget, one for if your costs are forecasted to exceed your budget, and one if your costs do exceed your budget.