Introduction.
In the ever-evolving world of cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has established itself as the dominant force, powering everything from scrappy startups to global enterprises. But for many newcomers whether they’re developers, students, entrepreneurs, or hobbyists the sheer breadth of services and potential costs can be intimidating.
If you’ve ever hesitated to dive into AWS because you’re afraid of racking up surprise charges or simply don’t know where to start, you’re not alone.
Fortunately, AWS offers a remarkably generous entry point for exactly this reason: the AWS Free Tier. It’s designed to give users hands-on access to many of its most powerful tools without any upfront cost, allowing you to learn, test, and even launch small applications at absolutely no charge.
And this isn’t just a stripped-down sandbox. The Free Tier includes over 100 services ranging from compute and storage to databases, AI/ML tools, and security each with its own free usage limits. Whether you want to host a static website, run a database, launch a serverless app, or train a small machine learning model, there’s probably a way to do it within the Free Tier.
Even better, some of these services are always free, meaning you can continue using them indefinitely as long as you stay within the usage limits. Others are available free for 12 months from the day you open your account, giving you a full year to experiment and build.
There are also short-term trials for more advanced services, perfect for trying before buying. With the right knowledge and a little planning, it’s entirely possible to build and operate meaningful cloud-based projects for $0 per month no catch, no credit card surprises.
In fact, AWS encourages this kind of exploration; it’s how countless developers got their start. However, it’s crucial to understand how the Free Tier works, what services are included, where the limits are, and most importantly how to monitor your usage.
While the Free Tier is a great safety net, going beyond the included quotas can incur charges quickly if you’re not paying attention. That’s why this guide exists.
In this post, we’ll break down the different types of AWS Free Tier offerings, explore the most popular free services, share example projects you can build without spending a dime, and offer practical tips to help you stay within the free boundaries.
By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of what’s truly possible with AWS at no cost, and the confidence to begin building in the cloud.
Whether you’re just curious, launching your first side project, or preparing for a cloud certification exam, the AWS Free Tier is a powerful stepping stone and this guide is your roadmap.
So let’s unpack what’s available, what’s possible, and how you can make the most of AWS for free.
What Is the AWS Free Tier?
The AWS Free Tier is Amazon Web Services’ way of giving users a head start in the cloud without having to spend any money upfront. It’s essentially a bundled offering of limited, no-cost access to a wide selection of AWS cloud services that lets developers, students, startups, and businesses explore, learn, test, and even deploy small applications without the burden of early costs.
Designed with accessibility and experimentation in mind, the Free Tier serves as a risk-free introduction to AWS’s powerful infrastructure. But far from being just a limited trial, it’s actually a well-structured framework divided into three main categories: 12-Month Free, Always Free, and Short-Term Trials.
Each category has its own rules, services, and usage limits, and understanding the difference between them is critical to staying within the no-cost boundary.
The 12-Month Free Tier activates the moment you create a new AWS account and remains available for a full year. During this period, you get access to a set of services with clearly defined monthly usage limits.
These are designed to be enough for testing or running small-scale applications for example, 750 hours per month of a Linux or Windows EC2 t2.micro or t3.micro instance, 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 750 hours of Amazon RDS for select database engines, and more.
After 12 months, these free quotas expire and regular pay-as-you-go pricing kicks in, which is why monitoring usage and timelines is important.
Then there’s the Always Free Tier, which as the name suggests remains available indefinitely, not just for the first year. As long as you stay within the specified monthly limits, you can keep using certain services at no charge for as long as you have an AWS account.
This includes 1 million AWS Lambda requests per month, 25 GB of DynamoDB storage, 1 TB of CloudFront content delivery, and more. These offerings are great for lightweight workloads, automation, hobby projects, and learning platforms because they allow ongoing usage without expiration.
Lastly, the Short-Term Trials offer temporary free access to more advanced services or features, often intended to give you a chance to explore specific tools before you commit to using them.
For example, you might get 30 days of AWS Lightsail or a set number of compute hours on Amazon SageMaker for model training. These trials are more restricted and vary depending on the service, so it’s essential to read the fine print.
Altogether, the AWS Free Tier isn’t just a marketing gimmick it’s a fully functional, carefully curated program meant to make cloud adoption easier and less risky.
It encourages learning by doing, prototyping without pressure, and building confidence in cloud-based solutions. Whether you want to host a simple website, create a serverless function, analyze data, store files securely, or even build a chatbot, there’s a good chance you can do it using the Free Tier if you stay within its constraints.
By knowing what services are included, how much usage you get for free, and how long that access lasts, you can take full advantage of AWS’s capabilities while keeping your costs at $0. It’s one of the most accessible ways to gain real-world experience with one of the most powerful cloud platforms in the world and for those just getting started, it’s an opportunity too valuable to ignore.
Top Services Included in the Free Tier.
- Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
750 hours/month of t2.micro or t3.micro instances (Linux or Windows) for 12 months. - Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
5 GB of Standard storage, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests – always free. - AWS Lambda
1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month – always free. - Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
750 hours/month of db.t2.micro for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB (12 months). - Amazon CloudFront (CDN)
1 TB of data transfer out and 10,000,000 HTTP/S requests per month – always free. - Amazon DynamoDB
25 GB of storage, 200 million requests/month, and up to 2.5 million read/write units – always free. - Amazon API Gateway
1 million REST API calls per month – always free. - Amazon Lightsail
Free for 3 months: one $5/month virtual server with 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20 GB SSD. - Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)
1 million publishes and 1000 email notifications per month – always free. - Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service)
1 million requests per month – always free. - AWS Step Functions
4,000 state transitions per month – always free. - Amazon Textract
Up to 1,000 pages per month for text extraction from documents – 3-month trial. - Amazon Rekognition
5,000 images/month for label detection and 1,000 for facial analysis – 12-month free tier. - Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab
Always free: Jupyter-based ML development environment (CPU/GPU) with no AWS account needed. - Amazon Comprehend
50K units of text for sentiment analysis, entity recognition, etc. – 12-month free tier. - Amazon Translate
2 million characters of translation per month – 12-month free tier. - Amazon Polly
5 million characters for text-to-speech conversion per month – 12-month free tier. - AWS Glue Data Catalog
1 million objects and 1 million accesses per month – always free. - AWS CloudWatch
10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 1 million API requests, and 5 GB log data ingestion – always free. - AWS Config
7 rules per region and 10,000 configuration items recorded per month – always free.
Real Projects You Can Build for Free.
Here are five projects you can build entirely within the Free Tier:
- Static Website – Host it on S3 + CloudFront.
- REST API Backend – Use Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB.
- Personal WordPress Site – EC2 + RDS (t2.micro).
- IoT Dashboard – AWS IoT Core + DynamoDB + Lambda.
- ML Experiment – Use SageMaker Studio Lab or lightweight SageMaker jobs within free limits.
Tips to Stay Within Free Tier Limits
- Set Billing Alerts – Use AWS Budgets and set cost alerts.
- Use Cost Explorer – Monitor usage before it crosses the free tier.
- Tag Your Resources – Know what’s in use and delete unused resources.
- Enable Free Tier Usage Alerts – AWS can notify you when you’re close to limits.
- Don’t Ignore Data Transfer Costs – Some egress traffic isn’t free.
Final Thoughts.
AWS Free Tier is one of the best ways to learn cloud computing hands-on. Whether you’re experimenting, prototyping, or just exploring, you can do a lot without paying a dime as long as you stay within the limits.
Tip: Use the AWS Free Tier calculator to plan your project budget before you deploy.
Conclusion.
The AWS Free Tier is a powerful gateway into cloud computing offering a risk-free way to explore dozens of services, build real-world applications, and get hands-on experience without spending a cent.
Whether you’re launching a static website, experimenting with serverless functions, or diving into databases and machine learning, there’s a lot you can do within the free limits.
That said, it’s essential to understand the usage caps and monitor your resources regularly to avoid unexpected charges. With the right approach, the Free Tier can be more than just a trial it can be the foundation for learning, innovation, and even launching your next big idea.
So go ahead: spin up that EC2 instance, deploy your first Lambda function, or build your first API. The cloud is literally yours to explore for free.
