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Free Tier is not working

0

I created a Postgres DB instance on Amazon RDS within the Free Tier, and I created a test table and a test DB without any data, so the storage amount used is very minimal and on the second date I got charged. I can see that my free tier will expire in a year. Not sure how what the free tier includes but it seems like I have used it very minimally and still got charged that is very concerning. Any help is appreciated. My DB instance complies with the following criteria: "Amazon RDS free tier includes 750 hours of Amazon RDS Single-AZ db.t2.micro, db.t3.micro, or db.t4g.micro instance, and 20 GB of General Purpose (SSD) DB Storage, running a MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL database per month, across all AWS Regions except GovCloud (US) and Asia Pacific (Osaka) Local, but just during 12 months starting with the date on which you create your AWS account."

asked 2 years ago577 views
3 Answers
1

Not all resources are free!

There are three types of free resources:

  • free trials
  • 12-months free
  • always free

See this page to find the specific free tier items/offers.
https://aws.amazon.com/free/?all-free-tier.sort-by=item.additionalFields.SortRank&all-free-tier.sort-order=asc&awsf.Free%20Tier%20Types=*all&awsf.Free%20Tier%20Categories=*all

Always assume you will be charged unless you verify the resource is part of a free tier offer.

AWS
EXPERT
answered 2 years ago
0

Hi,

Did you provision your RDS database multi-AZ deployment or enable public IP address for the database?

Review your AWS bills to understand which resources incurred charges.

Amazon RDS usage per month: 750 hours on select Single-AZ Instance databases. Usage is aggregated across instance types if using more than one instance. (Available engines: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server – SQL Server Express Edition only.) General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage per month: 20 GB Storage for automated database backups per month: 20 GB

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

EXPERT
answered 2 years ago
0

Have you actually received an invoice and a payment has been taken from your payment method (usually a credit card), or is it just coming up in the running total for this month? It's normal to see what appears to be a non-zero charge mid-month, which will become a zero-charge when Free Tier entitlements are applied and an invoice is generated at the end of the month.

The amounts you see when you initially login to AWS Console, in the section Cost and usage with headings Current month costs and Forecast month end costs are running totals before Free Tier entitlements (and any other credits) are applied. When your bill is calculated at the end of the month and an invoice is generated, your Free Tier entitlements will be applied to arrive at the final total.

As long as all your usage is within Free Tier then this total charge for RDS should be zero.

Could the charge not actually be for RDS, but for an IPv4 address? if your RDS instance was assigned with a public IPv4 address then these are charged at $0.005 per hour, and under free Tier you get 750 hours per month for use with EC2 only, but not with RDS. See https://repost.aws/articles/ARknH_OR0cTvqoTfJrVGaB8A/why-am-i-seeing-charges-for-public-ipv4-addresses-when-i-am-under-the-aws-free-tier

IMPORTANT NOTE : .... If you are using Public IP with any other service than EC2 or Free Tier is expired on the account, then a charge of $0.005 per IP per hour will be present on the account.

Such charges would come under the Virtual Private Cloud section of the Billing console https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/bills

If you still feel you have been erroneously billed, you can log a billing support call at https://support.console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/case/create?issueType=customer-service

  • Type: Account and billing
  • Service: Billing
EXPERT
answered 2 years ago

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