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Hlo,
1.Data Transfer Costs: While EC2 usage itself might be covered under the free tier, there could be data transfer costs associated with your usage, especially if there was any inbound or outbound data transfer. Data transfer costs are not covered under the EC2 free tier.
2.Elastic IP Addresses: If you associated an Elastic IP address with your EC2 instance and it's not being used, AWS might charge you for the unused IP address. However, the first Elastic IP address associated with the running instance is free under the AWS Free Tier.
3.Other Services: It's possible that there are charges for other AWS services or resources that you might not be aware of. Reviewing your detailed billing report should give you a breakdown of the charges. To investigate further:
Check the detailed billing report in your AWS Billing Console. It provides a comprehensive breakdown of your AWS charges, including EC2 usage, data transfer costs, and any other associated costs. Look for any unexpected charges or usage that might not be covered under the free tier. Ensure that you're reviewing the billing information for the correct AWS account and region. If you're still unsure about the charges, you can contact AWS support for assistance in understanding your bill and resolving any discrepancies.
Several things to unpack here. First would be to check that this is the first time you have signed up for an AWS account using that email address? If you've previously used the same email before then it isn't eligible for free tier a second time.
Did you choose an instance type that is free tier eligible? Genrally this would be t2.micro or t3.micro (depends on the region), and the OS you choose to install must also be free tier eligible.
Free tier also gives you to 30GB of EBS general purpose storage, did you pick this type and not provisioned IOPS (the latter lies outside of free tier)? Any EBS charges will come under the EC2 section of your bill.
As for the disappearing instance, can you double-check you are looking at the right region?
You can find out more about what you're being charged for, as well as the region(s) where the charges have been incurred, by going to the Billing Dashboard, then on the pane on the left select Bills, and select the month you want to view.
Scroll down to Charges by Service and you should be able to see a breakdown of what you were billed for by service, and within each service it will be broken down by region.
There's a good document on how to avoid charges in free tier https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/free-tier-charges. If you still think you have been wrongly charged then open a billing case https://support.console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/case/create
If you have stopped the instance, it should not have disappeared. Most common thing, which we miss while looking up the instance from EC2 console, we click "Instances(running)", did you try removing that filter and see if it's really gone(That never happens at lest to my knowledge).
Which type of EC2 instance, you launched, did you allocate any elastic IPs, NAT Gateways, EBS, etc. what's that charge for. If you launched an EC2 instance eligible for free tier, I'd encourage you to log billing case to AWS and explain the situation, they would verify this from their end and would act on it accordingly.
See How to log account and billing case
How you can see detailed cost report
- Go to Cost Explorer -> Choose Date Range in right pane
- Granularity -> Daily
- Dimension -> Usage Type
- Service -> EC2
Note: Repeat same by changing option in Dimensions field as Region, Cost Category and Availability zone, Cost Category one by one. After this, repeat for EC2-Other in service filter to gain additional insight, if charges have anything to do with EC2 related services such as EBS, data transfer etc.
This would show you when and what are the resources/which region/AZ that's happening.
If you want to setup alert, you can consider setting up AWS budgets and configure alarm on those, which would notify you, if you cross the defined usage threshold. Follow the Well Architected Lab instructions here for setting up budget alert based on your usage.
I would strongly recommend to setup AWS budget alert. Be noted that budgets are not real time and there may be lag of 4-6 hours but you can definitely avoid such surprises if some of resources left turned on accidentally/unknowingly.
Important: Free tier doesn't necessarily translate to "Everything Free", there can be resource types/services, which may not be eligible for free tier and while using free tier resources, you may end up provisioning resources, which are not free tier eligible and end up getting charges.
Rest assured, you'd not have to pay something which you are not supposed to or haven't used, at the end.
Thanks Abhishek. I was looking at the wrong zone (AWS changed to a random zone when I logged in today, no idea why), the instance is still there.
I'll open a billing case, thanks for the advice.
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Thanks Gary, I see you added the cost report.
Just want to add a comment here (all above solutions are great) but you said you have "stopped" an instance and NOT "terminated". When you stop an instance, you are not charged for the compute but for other resources attached to the instance like EBS volume (above free limit), elastic IPs, NAT Gateways etc.
So you need to careful as you are testing and not using EC2, you should terminate it and not stop.
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You are right on two accounts:
It was in a different region. AWS changed it randomly when I logged in today. The instance is still the region I created it in.
I did have an AWS account many years ago with the same email. When I decided to use AWS again last week I was actually surprised that I had to register a new account. Of course, I expected that to be a new account, otherwise I would have been able to simply log into the old one. Oh well. At least now I know why I was charged.
Thanks RWC!