AWS Billing FAQ

                                                            Billing FAQ

Q: How will I be charged and billed for my use of Amazon EC2?

You pay only for what you use. Displayed pricing is an hourly rate but depending on which instances you choose, you pay by the hour or second (minimum of 60 seconds) for each instance type. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed based on instance usage. Data transferred between AWS services in different regions will be charged as Internet Data Transfer on both sides of the transfer. Usage for other Amazon Web Services is billed separately from Amazon EC2.For EC2 pricing information, please visit the pricing section on the EC2 detail page.

Q: When does billing of my Amazon EC2 systems begin and end?

Billing commences when Amazon EC2 initiates the boot sequence of an AMI instance. Billing ends when the instance terminates, which could occur through a web services command, by running "shutdown -h", or through instance failure. When you stop an instance, we shut it down but don't charge hourly usage for a stopped instance, or data transfer fees, but we do charge for the storage for any Amazon EBS volumes. To learn more, visit the AWS Documentation.

Q: What defines billable EC2 instance usage?

Instance usages are billed for any time your instances are in a "running" state. If you no longer wish to be charged for your instance, you must "stop" or "terminate" the instance to avoid being billed for additional instance usage. Billing starts when an instance transitions into the running state.

Q: If I have two instances in different availability zones, how will I be charged for regional data transfer?

Each instance is charged for its data in and data out at corresponding Data Transfer rates. Therefore, if data is transferred between these two instances, it is charged at "Data Transfer Out from EC2 to Another AWS Region" for the first instance and at "Data Transfer In from Another AWS Region" for the second instance. Please refer to this page for detailed data transfer

Q. If I have two instances in different regions, how will I be charged for data transfer?

Each instance is charged for its data in and data out at Internet Data Transfer rates. Therefore, if data is transferred between these two instances, it is charged at Internet Data Transfer Out for the first instance and at Internet Data Transfer In for the second instance.

Q: How will my monthly bill show per-second versus per-hour?

Although EC2 charges in your monthly bill will now be calculated based on a per second basis, for consistency, the monthly EC2 bill will show cumulative usage for each instance that ran in a given month in decimal hours. An example would be an instance running for 1 hour 10 minutes and 4 seconds would look like 1.1677. Below is an example of a detailed billing report. The two highlighted areas show how the new report will look based on decimal hours.

Q: Do your prices include taxes?

Except as otherwise noted, our prices are exclusive of applicable taxes and duties, including VAT and applicable sales tax. For customers with a Japanese billing address, use of AWS services is subject to Japanese Consumption Tax. Learn more