Free tier

As explained in Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS

A free tier is a provider-defined allowance of cloud resources available at no charge under specified eligibility and usage limits.

A free tier is a provider-defined allowance of cloud resources available at no charge under eligibility and usage limits. AWS uses it to support experimentation and early service experience. Some allowances last for the first 12 months; others remain free indefinitely. section 1.4.1

Typical AWS allowances include:

• 750 hours of a small Linux or Windows virtual machine during the initial period. section 1.4.1
• 750 hours of a classic or application load balancer. section 1.4.1
• 5 GB of object storage, 20 GB of small relational-database storage including backup, and 25 GB of NoSQL storage. section 1.4.1
• The first 25 GB of the NoSQL database remains free forever, while other services may become billable after the trial period. section 1.4.1

Exceeding a limit starts charges without further notice, and AWS bills actual resource consumption at month end. Enable Free Tier usage alerts and create a recurring $5 monthly budget with actual and forecasted email thresholds before experimenting. section 1.9 section 1.10

Serverless allowance

AWS Lambda has a Free Tier that does not expire after 12 months. Its allowance includes the first 1 million requests each month and the equivalent of 400,000 seconds using 1 GB of memory. Other services used with Lambda can still add costs. section 6.4.2

Figure 1.25 Creating a Free Tier usage alert to avoid unwanted costs

Use the usage-alert figure to locate the billing preference that warns when Free Tier consumption approaches its limits. section 1.9

How Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS covers it

How deep it goes

Defines allowances, expiration rules, billing consequences, and alert configuration, but does not catalog every AWS service.

Examples

Uses virtual machines, load balancers, databases, WordPress infrastructure, and Lambda requests as concrete allowance and cost examples.

What it assumes

Assumes an AWS account with a telephone number and credit card, while introducing Free Tier usage monitoring from the beginning.

What you can do after

Operate/configure AWS experiments within allowances and receive alerts before actual or forecasted costs exceed a chosen budget.

How it connects

Connects virtual machines, load balancers, object storage, relational databases, NoSQL databases, Lambda, budgets, and pay-per-use billing.

liveBookmanning.com

Read Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Related concepts

• M0 tierincludes · The M0 tier is a free Atlas cluster tier intended for beginner use with restricted resources and functionality.
• AWS Lambdaused by · AWS Lambda is Amazon Web Services’ managed serverless computing service for running code in response to events or requests without managing servers.
• estimatecontrasts with · An estimate is an approximate prediction or assessment of the time, effort, resources, or cost required for defined work or activity.
• AWSconfigures · Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's public cloud computing platform, providing on-demand infrastructure and managed services over the internet.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.