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Hi There
No you are not being charged just for navigating around the AWS console.
You might be exceeding the Free-Tier for EBS by 7.656 GB. You get 30GB of EBS volume storage per month for one year under free tier. Do you have more than 30GB of EBS volumes in your account? You can view this by going into the console, navigating to the EC2 service, and clicking on Volumes. See Free Tier Pricing Details
You can also track your free tier usage and setup alerts by following the instructions in this article
Also check your free-tier expiration. Free tier starts on the date you sign up for AWS. So its also possible that your free-tier benefits for EBS volumes have just expired, and you are now starting to be billed mid-month for the usage. See this article for more information about free tier and what happens when it expires https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/free-tier-expiring/
In either case, I suggest setting up billing alerts on your account so that you are notified when charges cross a threshold that you define. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/monitor_estimated_charges_with_cloudwatch.html
For EBS volumes in particular, you are not charged for the utilization of resources (e.g. how much storage you actually have on that volume versus how much is not used), but you're charged for what you provision: https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/
This means that if you create 8Gb EBS volume and attach it to your instance, then you will be charged for 8Gb of EBS storage per month (in the region where you run your resources). You may be for example actively utilizing only 4Gb of your provisioned EBS storage, but nevertheless, the pricing works based on what you've provisioned for your volume (full volume).
The billing is also pro-rated. Which means, that effectively, if you only use one 8Gb volume, then in a 30-days month you would be charged approx. for 273Mb (pro-rated) on a daily basis.
Thanks Nataliya for your response.
It's beginning to make sense, but i need to understand better.
I have 8 instances in total (which have all been stopped like a week ago and earlier for older instances). Total volume is (78GiB). I always make it a point of duty to stop all instances after using them. Will it be better if i terminate them?
Currently a quick glance at the volumes under EBS shows volume state = in use; volume status=okay. I didn't do anything on my account for a week or two, but my bill ALWAYS increases. WHen i looked at the attached instances, it shows i have seven sda1 and just one xvda volumes attached to the 8 instances.
$0.10 per GB-month of General Purpose SSD (gp2) provisioned storage - US East (Northern Virginia) 21.297 GB-Mo. Cost = USD 2.13.
I'd like to understand which of the activities are incurring costs so i know how to plan ahead. Thank you.
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Hello mthwbard,
Thanks for responding to my question.
I still haven't figured out where the charges are coming from. My account is 4 mo. Though i have created many instances (78GiB) in volume but all of them has been stopped. I always make it a point of duty to stop all instances after using them. Will it be better if i terminate them? Volume state = in use; volume status=okay. I didn't do anything on my account for a week and it has increased by over a dollar.
I have seven sda1 and just one xvda volumes attached to the 8 instances i have which have all been stopped a week ago.
I just want to understand which of the activities is incurring costs so i can know how to plan ahead. Thank you.