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AWS free credits, trials and programs for November 2026
We may earn a commission when you sign up through links here. It never changes what you pay. Details
AWS does not issue public promo codes. AWS doesn’t publish public promo codes for compute or Bedrock usage. Credits arrive either as an account balance, which is how the Free Tier credits work, or as a single-use redemption code tied to one account through Activate, research and event programs. A code found on a coupon site is expired, already used, or outside the promotional credit terms.
$100 now, up to $200 over 6 monthsVerified Nov 2Sample
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Who qualifies: Brand-new AWS accounts opened since July 15, 2025, most without a payment method
A new account receives $100 immediately and earns $20 for each of five console activities covering AWS Budgets, EC2, RDS, Lambda and Bedrock. The Free plan runs six months or until the balance is spent and can’t produce a charge.
Accounts that previously existed are ineligible. Not available in GovCloud or China Regions. Credits expire 12 months after account creation once upgraded. Free plan accounts cannot receive other promotional credits.
Who qualifies: Pre-Series B startups founded within 10 years with an Org ID from an Activate Provider
Portfolio pays up to $200,000 for startups backed by an accelerator, angel investor or VC firm in the Activate Provider network. Credits cover infrastructure and third-party models on Bedrock. Apply with an AWS Builder ID and expect an answer in 5 to 10 business days.
AWS account must be on the Paid plan. Subject to the AWS Promotional Credit Terms, which exclude Marketplace, Route 53 domains, upfront Savings Plan fees and Enterprise Support. Expiration date is shown on the credit when issued.
$1,000, select startups up to $5,000Verified Nov 2Sample
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Who qualifies: Bootstrapped startups, pre-Series B, founded within 10 years, Paid plan account
Activate Founders is the self-serve tier for startups without an investor Org ID. You start with $1,000, and select participants may qualify for up to $5,000. Create an AWS Builder ID with a professional email, describe the product and funding stage, and link your AWS account.
One application per company unless requesting more than previously received. Free plan accounts are ineligible. Subject to the AWS Promotional Credit Terms.
Up to $5,000 for students, uncapped for facultyVerified Nov 2Sample
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Who qualifies: Faculty, research staff and graduate students at accredited research institutions
AWS Cloud Credit for Research funds public science-as-a-service tools, cloud migration benchmarks and training workshops. Student awards are capped at $5,000 and faculty awards are sized to the proposal. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and take 90 to 120 days.
EC2 usage limited to On-Demand and Spot Instances. Research program credits expire one year after issue under the promotional credit terms. No expedited reviews.
1M requests and 400,000 GB-seconds per monthVerified Nov 2Sample
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Who qualifies: Every AWS account on the Free or Paid plan, no expiry
Lambda includes one million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute per month in its free tier. It sits alongside DynamoDB at 25 GB of storage and CloudFront at 100 GB of transfer out, all available on both account plans without touching the credit balance.
Does not apply to functions using Provisioned Concurrency. Usage above the allowance draws on credits, then bills at on-demand rates on the Paid plan.
Accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 that have never existed before. Most new customers are not asked for a payment method. Not available in GovCloud or China Regions.
Pre-Series B startups founded in the last 10 years, backed by an Activate Provider such as an accelerator, angel or VC firm that supplies an Org ID. The AWS account must be on the Paid plan.
Bootstrapped or self-funded startups, pre-Series B and founded within 10 years, with an AWS account on the Paid plan and an AWS Builder ID created with a professional email.
Full-time faculty, full-time research staff, or graduate and PhD students at an accredited research institution, with a proposal for a public science-as-a-service tool, a migration benchmark or a training workshop.
Every account on either plan. Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudFront and other services carry monthly allowances that never expire, and credits cover usage above them.
Anyone 13 or older with an email address, no card. Hands-on labs cover S3, EC2, VPC and RDS, and the job board opens at 18. It does not fund an AWS account.
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Free tier that matters
$100 sign-up credit plus up to $100 earned over 6 months
Lambda 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds per month
DynamoDB 25 GB storage, 25 WCU and 25 RCU per month
CloudFront Free plan 100 GB transfer out and 1 million requests per month
Amazon Bedrock available on both plans, AgentCore is Paid plan only
30+ always-free services on both the Free and Paid plans
Recent program changes
Claude Sonnet 5.5 cache read price halved on Bedrock A note on Amazon’s Bedrock price list says that starting October 7, 2026 the cache read price for Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 50% lower than before. Base input and output rates didn’t change, so the saving lands on applications that reuse long prompts. Source
Aurora PostgreSQL joins the AWS Free Tier An AWS What’s New post dated March 25, 2026 adds Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless to the Free plan. It restates the $100 sign-up credit and the extra $100 earned through activities, and tells you to select the Free Plan during account sign-up. Source
Bedrock adds Priority and Flex inference service tiers AWS’s What’s New post of November 18, 2025 gives Bedrock two tiers beside Standard. Flex is priced at a discount and deprioritized at peak demand, while Priority costs more and delivers up to 25% higher output tokens per second on supported models. Source
Free Tier moves to $200 in credits over six months The AWS News Blog announced that accounts created on or after July 15, 2025 receive $100 at sign-up plus $20 per activity up to $200, with a Free plan that ends at six months. Accounts created earlier keep the legacy 12-month free tier. Source
New AWS accounts opened since July 15, 2025 start with $100 in credits and can earn $20 for each of five console activities, for $200 in total. The Free plan lasts six months or until the balance hits zero, whichever comes first. Accounts that existed before that date stay on the older 12-month free tier, so the two systems run side by side through at least mid 2026, and older guides describe a program you can’t get.
This page lists what AWS itself issues: the Free Tier credits, the always-free service allowances, AWS Activate for startups, the research credit program and the education offers. Nothing here involves resold credits, shared accounts or codes from third parties. Every number comes from an AWS page, and the one dated line at the bottom tells you when we last read them.
What runs out first is usually the six-month clock, not the money. A small Bedrock prototype or a single t3.micro rarely burns $200 in 180 days. The sharper risk is forgetting the deadline, because when the Free plan ends AWS suspends the account, keeps the data for 90 days, then deletes it unless you upgrade. Put the date in your calendar now.
How to claim AWS credits
Create a free accountOpen aws.amazon.com/free, choose Create a free account, and enter an email plus a root user name. Pick Free plan when asked which account plan you want. Most new customers aren’t asked for a payment method.
Open the Explore AWS widgetOn the Management Console home, find the Explore AWS widget and set its filter to Earn AWS credits. It lists five activities worth $20 each covering EC2, RDS, Lambda, Bedrock and AWS Budgets.
Set a cost budget firstChoose Set up a cost budget using AWS Budgets, then Use a template (simplified) and Monthly cost budget. This earns the first $20 and gives you an alert email before the balance runs low, which makes it the one activity that keeps paying off.
Finish the other four activitiesLaunch and terminate an EC2 instance, review an RDS launch configuration, build a Lambda function with a function URL, and submit one prompt in the Bedrock text playground. Each adds $20, and credits can take 30 minutes to post.
Check the Credits pageOpen the Billing and Cost Management console and pick Credits in the left navigation pane. The balance, expiration date and eligible services are listed there, and the console home shows how many days remain on the Free plan.
Upgrade before the six months endTo keep the account, choose Upgrade plan in the Billing console banner, review the features and choose Upgrade account. Remaining credits apply to later bills until 12 months after sign-up.
Ways to stretch your AWS credits
Earn the Budgets credit first
The AWS Budgets activity is the only one of the five that also protects you later. Set the monthly cost budget to something like $10 while on the Free plan, and raise it after you upgrade. You get $20 of credit for the setup and an email the moment real spend crosses the line. Twenty dollars for two minutes of clicking is the best rate on AWS.
Send bulk Bedrock jobs through batch inference
Batch inference for select Anthropic, Meta, Mistral and Amazon models on Bedrock runs 50% below on-demand rates. Evaluation runs, document classification and embedding backfills all tolerate a delay, so route them through batch and keep on-demand for user-facing calls only. Half price for waiting an hour or two is an easy trade.
Pick Flex when latency is loose
Since November 18, 2025 Bedrock offers Priority, Standard and Flex tiers set per request. Flex runs at a 50% discount to Standard and Priority at a 75% premium. Flex requests get deprioritized at peak demand, which is fine for nightly summarization or offline agents and wrong for anything a person is waiting on.
Use prompt caching on repeated context
Long system prompts and reference documents can be cached so later calls pay the cache read rate instead of full input price. From October 7, 2026 the cache read price for Claude Sonnet 5.5 on Bedrock dropped 50%, so caching pays back faster than it did a year ago. If the same 20-page reference prefixes every call, you’re overpaying without it.
Stay on the Free plan while prototyping
The Free plan can’t generate a charge, which makes it the safest place to learn Bedrock or Lambda. Upgrade only when you need Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, Marketplace offers or AgentCore, which are Paid plan features. The upgrade is permanent, so time it for when you actually need one of those.
Apply for Activate after upgrading
Free plan accounts can’t receive other promotional credits, including Activate. Upgrade to the Paid plan first, then apply with your Builder ID. Founders starts at $1,000 and Portfolio reaches $200,000, and AWS answers in 5 to 10 business days. Apply from a Free plan account and you’re ineligible before anyone reads it.
Keep the account out of an Organization
Joining AWS Organizations, setting up a Control Tower landing zone or joining the Partner Network converts a Free plan to Paid on its own, and activity credits expire immediately when that happens. Finish the five activities and spend the balance before any multi-account setup. One click in the wrong console and the $100 you earned is gone.
AWS billing, explained
On the Free plan AWS doesn’t charge the account at all. The $100 sign-up credit and any earned credit cover usage above the always-free allowances on a limited set of services, and anything that could drain the balance quickly, such as Savings Plans, Reserved Instances and most Marketplace listings, is simply unavailable. A payment method isn’t required for most new customers, though AWS may still ask for one to verify identity.
Once you choose Upgrade account you’re on pay-as-you-go pricing. Remaining Free Tier credits keep applying to eligible services until they expire, 12 months after the account was created. Usage beyond the balance bills at on-demand rates to the card on file, and the promotional credit terms exclude taxes, Route 53 domain registration, upfront Savings Plan fees and Enterprise Support from credit coverage.
If you never upgrade, the account closes at six months or when the credits are gone. AWS keeps your content for 90 days, and upgrading inside that window restores access to resources and data. After 90 days the account and its content are permanently erased, so export anything you care about before the reminder emails at 15, 7 and 2 days stop arriving.
AWS credits FAQ
how much free credit does aws give new accounts
New accounts get $100 in credits immediately and can earn up to $100 more, for $200 total. The extra $100 comes from five console activities worth $20 each: set a budget, launch and terminate an EC2 instance, review an RDS configuration, build a Lambda function and run a Bedrock prompt. The credits are available for six months on the Free plan, and an hour of clicking doubles your balance.
do i need a credit card for the aws free plan
Usually not. A payment method isn’t required to sign up for most new customers, although AWS can ask for one to verify identity in some cases. You’ll be asked to add a card when you choose Upgrade account, and you won’t be charged until that upgrade happens.
what happens when the aws free plan ends
The Free plan ends after six months or when the credits are used up, whichever comes first, and it can’t be extended. AWS suspends the account and keeps your data for 90 days. Upgrading to the Paid plan within those 90 days restores access and applies any leftover credits to future bills. Do nothing and the account and its content are deleted.
is amazon bedrock included in the aws free tier
Yes. Amazon Bedrock is available on both the Free and Paid plans, and submitting a prompt in the Bedrock text playground is one of the five activities that earns $20 in credits. Bedrock AgentCore is Paid plan only. Model usage draws down your credit balance at the on-demand per-token rate for whichever model you call.
how much are aws activate credits for startups
Activate Founders starts at $1,000 for self-funded startups, and select participants may qualify for up to $5,000. Activate Portfolio offers up to $200,000 for pre-Series B startups backed by an Activate Provider that issues an Org ID. An invite-only tier called AWS Credits for AI Startups goes beyond $200,000. The account must be on the Paid plan, whichever tier you’re after.
do aws free tier credits expire after 6 months
The Free plan itself ends at six months, but the credits can outlive it. Unused credits stay usable on eligible services for up to 12 months from the original sign-up date once you upgrade to the Paid plan. Activity credits expire immediately if the account joins an AWS Organization or a Control Tower landing zone.
can i get aws credits for university research
Yes, through AWS Cloud Credit for Research. Full-time faculty and research staff at accredited institutions can apply with no stated cap, and graduate or PhD student awards are limited to $5,000. Proposals are reviewed on a rolling basis and reviews take 90 to 120 days with no expedited option, so apply a semester ahead. Research program credits expire one year after issue.
UP TO $200$100 at sign-up, up to $200 in Free Tier credits
