How do I close my AWS account?

Short description

For security reasons, AWS Support can't close your AWS account on your behalf. Follow the instructions in the Resolution section to prepare your account for closing, and then close your account.

Resolution

Before closing your account

Troubleshoot common issues

Troubleshoot common issues that you might encounter with your account:

• For unintentional charges, see I unintentionally incurred charges while using the AWS Free Tier. How do I make sure that I'm not billed again?
• For concerns about account compromise, see What do I do if I notice unauthorized activity in my AWS account?
• For error messages related to closing your account, see Why do I get an error when I try to close my AWS account?

Sign in to your account, and back up resources

Review the following procedures, and take the necessary actions:

• If you didn't complete the account sign-up process, then complete it.
• Sign in as the AWS account root user. If you sign in to an account with an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user or role, then you can't close the account.
• Back up any resources or data that you want to keep. For instructions about how to back up a particular resource, see the AWS documentation for that service.
• Use AWS Transfer Family to transfer data from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS).
• For AWS Organizations accounts:
  By default, member accounts don't have a root password. Before you can sign in as the root user, you must reset the root user password for these accounts.
  If your account is the management account of an organization, then be sure to close or remove all member accounts from your organization. For more information, see Removing a member account from your organization and Impacts of closing an account.
  To close the payer account in an organization, first delete the organization.

Terminate all your resources

Closing your account might not automatically terminate all your active resources. You might continue to incur charges for some of your active resources, even after you close your account. You're charged for any usage fees that you incurred before closure.

Find all your active resources, and terminate them. See the following documentation for instructions:

1. Find all your active resources: How do I check for active resources that I no longer need on my AWS account?
2. Terminate all your resources: How do I terminate active resources that I no longer need on my AWS account?

Make sure that your billing information is up to date

Review the following billing information, and take the necessary actions:

• If you purchased subscriptions with ongoing payment commitments, then you're charged for these subscriptions until the plan term ends, even after you close your account. This applies to subscriptions such as, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans.
• After you close your account, your designated payment method is charged for any usage fees that you incurred before closure. If applicable, refunds are issued through the same payment method.
• You must add a valid credit card, debit card, or other payment method to close your account.
• If you reopen your closed account within 90 days, you might be charged for any AWS services that you didn't terminate before you closed the account.

Pay your outstanding bills

View your outstanding bills, and pay them:

1. Open the Billing and Cost Management console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Payments. You can see your overdue payments in the Payments Due section.
3. Choose Verify and pay next to any unpaid bills.

Close your account

To close your AWS account, do the following:

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console as the root user of the account.
2. In the navigation pane, choose your account name, and then choose Account.
3. Scroll to the Close Account section.
4. Read and understand the terms of closing your account.
5. Choose Close Account.

Within a few minutes, you receive email confirmation that your account is closed.

You can choose to sign in to your account three days after closing the account to check if you terminated all the resources. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console to monitor whether you continue to incur charges. If you continue to incur charges after terminating all your resources, then contact AWS Support.

After closing your account

• You can still sign in and file an AWS Support case, or contact Support for 90 days.
• After 90 days, AWS permanently deletes any content remaining in your account, and shuts down any AWS services that you didn't shut down. However, AWS might retain service attributes as long as necessary for billing and administration purposes. AWS retains your account information as described in the Privacy Notice. You can't permanently delete your account before 90 days. You can't reopen the account after 90 days.
  Note: The account resources in AWS China (Beijing) and AWS China (Ningxia) Regions are subject to the policies of their operating partners. The operating partners are Sinnet in the Beijing Region and NWCD in the Ningxia Region. Account closure procedures in China might take longer than in other AWS Regions.
• You can't use the same email address that was associated with your closed account to create new AWS accounts.

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