Accounts opened since July 15, 2025 get no S3-specific free allowance; $100 in Free Tier credits (up to $200) covers S3, and the Free plan ends after 6 months.
Verified ·Oct 15, 2026
Free allowance
What the free plan includes, as the provider states it.
- Free Tier credits at sign-up
- 100 USD
- Shared across all eligible AWS services. Up to $100 more can be earned by completing activities within 6 months. Free plan accounts lose access when the plan ends.
Before you rely on it
Read with the default assumptions: a project that may grow and may make money.
- Breaking: Deletes free resources after 270 days
- Notice: Free only for a limited time ($100 credit)
The fine print
Each verdict links to the quote it rests on.
- Free for
- A one-off $100 credit
- At the limit
- You are asked to upgrade
- Spending cap
- None needed: the free plan cannot bill you
- Idle projects
- No pause rule documentedThe Free plan expires 6 months after the account is opened or when Free Tier credits run out, whichever is earlier. The account then closes and AWS keeps its content for 90 days. Upgrading to the Paid plan in that period reopens the account and restores access; otherwise AWS permanently deletes it, at most about 270 days after opening.
- Data retention
- Free resources deleted after 270 days
- Card at sign-up
- Sometimes requiredNew AWS customers only. The new sign-up experience (limited rollout) usually needs no payment method; the advanced sign-up requires a valid payment method and phone verification by SMS.
- Identity check
- A phone number
- Commercial use
- Not statedAWS positions the Free plan for experiments and proofs of concept and the Paid plan for production applications; no explicit commercial-use rule.
- Mainland China
- Partly reachableGreatFire rates amazonaws.com as mixed. The S3 endpoints it tested (s3.amazonaws.com and regional s3.<region>.amazonaws.com hosts) read accessible, but some individual bucket hostnames (<bucket>.s3.amazonaws.com) are blocked. AWS China regions (Beijing, Ningxia) are a separate partition outside this offer, and Free Tier credits and plan selection are not available there.
- Sign-up regions
- No restrictions documented
- Quotas apply per
- Account
Alternatives
Other free plans for the same need, ranked by the same neutral rules.
Changes
- Correction
Better: Mainland China reachability corrected: not verified → partly reachable
- Oct 15, 2026
- Awaiting review
- Free plan