AWS is officially moving away from its long-standing 12-month free tier for new accounts. The new standard, called the Free Account Plan, is a credit-based model designed to eliminate the risk of unexpected bills for new users.

With this new plan, you get:

• A risk-free environment for experimenting and building proofs of concept for up to six months.
• A starting credit of $100, with the potential to earn another $100 by completing specific exploration activities, such as launching an EC2 instance. This means you can get up to $200 in credits to use across eligible services.
• The plan ends after six months or once your credits are entirely spent, whichever comes first. After that, you have a 90-day window to upgrade to a paid plan and restore access to your account and data.

This shift, as Principal Developer Advocate Channy Yun explains, allows new users to get hands-on experience without cost commitments. However, it’s worth noting that some services typically used by large enterprises won’t be available on this free plan.

While some may see this as a step back, I tend to agree with Corey Quinn’s perspective. He writes that this is “a return to product-led growth rather than focusing on enterprise revenue to the exclusion of all else.” Let’s face it: big companies aren’t concerned with the free tier. But for students and hobbyists, who can be seen as the next generation of cloud builders, a credit-based, risk-free sandbox is a much more attractive proposition. The new notifications for credit usage and expiration dates are a smart addition that provides peace of mind.

How the New Plan Compares to Other Hyperscalers

A helpful plan for those who like to experiment on AWS, I think. Yet, other hyperscalers like Azure and GCP offer similar plans too. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have long operated on credit-based models.

• Azure offers a different model: $200 in credits for the first 30 days, supplemented by over 25 “always free” services and a selection of services available for free for 12 months.
• GCP provides a 90-day, $300 Free Trial for new customers, which can be applied to most products, along with an “Always Free” tier that gives ongoing access to core services like Compute Engine and Cloud Storage up to specific monthly limits.

This alignment among the major cloud providers highlights a consensus on the best way to attract and onboard new developers.

Microsoft also offers $100 in Azure credits through Azure for students. Note that the MSDN credits are typically a monthly allowance tied to a specific Visual Studio subscription, and the student credits are a lump sum for a particular period (e.g., 12 months), as I believe these different models can be confusing.

Speaking of other cloud providers, my own experience with Azure is an excellent example of how these credit models can be beneficial. I enjoy credits for Azure because of my MVP benefits, and through MSDN subscriptions, one has a monthly $150 in credits. These are different options from the general one I mentioned earlier. Anyway, there are ways to access services provided by the three big hyperscalers that allow you to get hands-on experience in combination with their documentation and what you can find in public repos.

In general, when you like to learn more about Azure, AWS, or GCP, the following table shows the most straightforward options:

Cloud Hyperscaler	Free Credits	Documentation	Repo (samples)
Azure	Azure Free Account	Microsoft Learn	Azure Samples · GitHub
AWS	AWS Free Tier	AWS Documentation	AWS Samples · GitHub
GCP	GCP Free Trial	Google Cloud Documentation	Google Cloud Platform · GitHub