Why didn't my storage costs reduce after I deleted a snapshot of my EBS volume and then the volume itself?

Resolution

Charges for Amazon EBS volumes and Amazon EBS snapshots are managed separately. For EBS volumes, your AWS account is charged for the amount of storage space that you provision. After you delete the volume, your account doesn't continue to incur charges for the resource but does continue to incur charges for snapshots. The next billing cycle reflects the lower cost for your EBS storage.

If other snapshots reference the data, then your data storage costs might not reduce after you delete a snapshot. If other snapshots reference the data, then the data is preserved. It's a best practice to delete snapshots that you no longer use.

To track the changes for snapshots, use cost allocation tags on the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. Or, generate a Cost and Usage Report on AWS Cost Explorer.

Use Recycle Bin to recover accidentally deleted snapshots. If your account uses Recycle Bin, then deleted snapshots are automatically moved to the Recycle Bin. AWS bills snapshots in Recycle Bin at the same rates as regular snapshots, but Recycle Bin snapshots are visible only in Recycle Bin. Manually check for snapshots in Recycle Bin. To track the usage of snapshots in Recycle Bin, use the AWS generated cost allocation tag with the aws:recycle-bin:resource-in-bin key. Then, set the value to True.

You can view the charges for Amazon EBS volumes and snapshots on the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

Related information

Why am I charged for Amazon EBS when all my instances are stopped?

Charges incurred by Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes and snapshots