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Free Tier Navigator

Maximize cloud free tiers without surprise bills

⚠️

Free Tier Reality Check

Free tiers are great for learning, but they have limits. Many developers have been surprised by bills after exceeding free tier limits without realizing it. Always set up billing alerts BEFORE you start experimenting!

AWS
Google Cloud
Azure

🎁 Always Free

Forever

These services remain free indefinitely, regardless of how long you've had your account.

AWS Lambda Compute
1M requests/month
400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month. Perfect for small APIs and automation.
DynamoDB Database
25 GB storage
25 WCU and 25 RCU of provisioned capacity. Good for small apps with predictable traffic.
S3 Storage
5 GB standard storage
20,000 GET requests, 2,000 PUT requests per month. Only for first 12 months!
⚠️ Becomes paid after 12 months - set reminders!
CloudWatch Monitoring
10 custom metrics
10 alarms, 1M API requests, 5GB log data ingestion.
SNS Messaging
1M publishes/month
100,000 HTTP/S deliveries. Great for notifications.
SQS Messaging
1M requests/month
Standard queues. Perfect for decoupling services.

📅 12-Month Free Tier

Limited Time

Available for 12 months from account creation. Mark your calendar!

EC2 Compute
750 hours/month t2.micro
Linux or Windows. Enough for one instance running 24/7.
⚠️ Runs 24/7 = only one free instance. Two instances = charges!
RDS Database
750 hours/month db.t2.micro
20 GB storage, 20 GB backups. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB.
⚠️ Multi-AZ is NOT free tier - stick to single AZ!
EBS Storage
30 GB SSD (gp2)
2M I/O operations, 1 GB snapshot storage.
ElastiCache Cache
750 hours cache.t2.micro
Redis or Memcached. One node only.

🎁 Always Free

Forever
Compute Engine Compute
1 e2-micro instance/month
US regions only. 30 GB HDD, 1 GB network egress.
Cloud Functions Compute
2M invocations/month
400,000 GB-seconds, 200,000 GHz-seconds compute.
Cloud Storage Storage
5 GB regional storage
US regions only. 5,000 Class A, 50,000 Class B operations.
Firestore Database
1 GB storage
50,000 reads, 20,000 writes, 20,000 deletes per day.
BigQuery Analytics
1 TB queries/month
10 GB active storage. Perfect for learning SQL analytics.
Cloud Run Containers
2M requests/month
360,000 GB-seconds memory, 180,000 vCPU-seconds.

💰 $300 Free Credits

90 Days

New accounts get $300 credit valid for 90 days. Can use on ANY service.

Any GCP Service All
$300 credit
Spend on GPUs, AI APIs, Kubernetes, or anything else. Expires after 90 days.
⚠️ GPU instances can burn through credits fast!

🎁 Always Free

Forever
Azure Functions Compute
1M executions/month
400,000 GB-seconds compute. Consumption plan only.
Cosmos DB Database
1000 RU/s, 25 GB
Serverless option with autoscale. Multi-model database.
Blob Storage Storage
5 GB LRS hot storage
20,000 read, 10,000 write operations.
App Service PaaS
10 web/mobile/API apps
F1 tier only (60 CPU min/day). Good for testing.

💰 $200 Free Credits

30 Days

New accounts get $200 credit valid for 30 days.

Any Azure Service All
$200 credit
30-day validity. Shorter than GCP but can use on anything.

💸 Free Tier Gotchas - Avoid These!

Forgetting to Stop Resources
EC2/VMs keep charging even when idle. Forgot a database instance running? That's $15-50/month.
Common Bill Surprise: $50-200
Data Transfer Out
Downloading data FROM the cloud costs money. 100GB out = ~$9. Serving images/videos adds up fast.
Per GB: $0.09 AWS, $0.12 GCP
Wrong Instance Type
t2.micro is free tier. t3.micro is NOT. One letter difference = unexpected charges.
t3.micro: ~$8/month (not free)
Multi-AZ Databases
RDS Multi-AZ doubles cost AND isn't covered by free tier. Easy to enable accidentally.
Multi-AZ RDS: $25-50/month
Elastic IPs Not Attached
AWS charges for Elastic IPs that aren't attached to running instances. $3.60/month per idle IP.
Per Idle EIP: $3.60/month
Snapshot Accumulation
EBS snapshots persist after you delete instances. They quietly accumulate and cost ~$0.05/GB/month.
100GB snapshots: $5/month

✅ Free Tier Survival Tips

🔔

Set Billing Alerts FIRST

Before creating any resources, set up $1, $5, and $10 billing alerts. All providers support this.

📅

Calendar Your 12-Month Mark

Set a reminder for 11 months after account creation to audit resources before free tier expires.

🏷️

Tag Everything

Add tags like "project=learning" or "environment=dev" to track what resources are for what.

🧹

Weekly Cleanup Habit

Every Friday, check your console for orphaned resources: unattached EBS, old snapshots, stopped instances.

🌍

Check ALL Regions

Resources in other regions don't show in your default view. A forgotten instance in eu-west-1 still costs money.

📊

Use Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer, GCP Billing, Azure Cost Management - check these weekly, not monthly.

📊 Quick Comparison: Free Tier Basics

Feature AWS GCP Azure
Trial Credits None $300 (90 days) $200 (30 days)
Free Compute (Always) Lambda only e2-micro 24/7 Functions only
Free VM (12 months) t2.micro Use always-free B1S
Free Database RDS (12 mo) Firestore Cosmos DB
Free Storage 5GB S3 (12 mo) 5GB GCS 5GB Blob
Best For Learning Enterprise patterns ML/Data/Containers .NET/Enterprise

🧠 Free Tier Knowledge Check

1. You have 2 EC2 t2.micro instances running 24/7. How much of this is covered by AWS free tier?
Both instances are free
One instance is free, one is charged
Both instances are charged
Correct! Free tier gives 750 hours/month. Two instances running 24/7 = 1,460 hours. Only 750 are free, so you pay for ~710 hours (~$6).
2. Which of these will NOT generate surprise charges on a new AWS account?
1M Lambda invocations/month
RDS Multi-AZ deployment
50GB data transfer out
Correct! Lambda has 1M free invocations always. Multi-AZ isn't free tier, and data transfer costs ~$4.50 for 50GB.
3. Your GCP $300 credits expire in 30 days. You want to train ML models. What's the risk?
No risk - training is always free
GPU instances can burn credits in hours, then charge your card
Credits automatically renew after 90 days
Correct! An A100 GPU costs ~$4/hour. 75 hours = $300 gone. Always set budget alerts when using GPUs!