The word "free" gets thrown around aggressively in cloud hosting marketing, and AWS is no exception. Twelve months of free services sounds incredible—until the first bill arrives and suddenly there are charges nobody expected. The confusion isn't malicious exactly, but the free tier has enough caveats and restrictions that calling it "free" without serious qualifiers feels generous.

Understanding what's actually included in Amazon Cloud Hosting Services free tier, where the limits sit, and what triggers charges requires reading documentation most people skip. That oversight creates unpleasant surprises around month two or three when usage patterns become clear.

The 12-Month Clock Starts Immediately

Free tier eligibility begins the moment an AWS account gets created, not when services actually start getting used. Someone could sign up, test a few things for a week, then forget about the account for six months. When they return to actually build something, half the free period is already gone.

That clock matters because many of the most useful free services—EC2 compute hours, RDS database time, data transfer allowances—only last those first twelve months. After that, everything converts to standard pricing whether someone's ready or not.

There are some permanently free services (Lambda requests, DynamoDB storage up to certain limits), but the big-ticket items that let someone actually host a meaningful website or application? Those expire.

EC2 Compute: 750 Hours Sounds Like a Lot Until It Isn't

The free tier includes 750 hours per month of EC2 t2.micro (or t3.micro in some regions) instance usage. That's enough to run a single small instance continuously for an entire month—31 days times 24 hours equals 744 hours.

Seems perfectly reasonable for a small project. The catch: spin up two instances and that allowance gets consumed in half a month. Test environments, staging servers, load-balanced setups—any architecture beyond a single instance starts eating through free hours fast.

And t2.micro is legitimately small. One virtual CPU, 1GB of memory. Fine for a low-traffic blog or simple API, but anything with real traffic or resource demands needs something larger, which isn't covered.

Storage Gets Complicated Fast

S3 storage includes 5GB standard storage free for the first 12 months. For reference, that's roughly 1,500 high-resolution photos or maybe 2-3 hours of standard video. A small website's image assets could fit comfortably, but any media-heavy application blows through that almost immediately.

Then there's EBS storage—the persistent block storage that EC2 instances use for their operating systems and data. Free tier includes 30GB combined across General Purpose (SSD) and Magnetic volumes. That's the OS, application files, databases, logs, everything.

Operating systems alone can consume 10-15GB. Add a database, some log files, and suddenly that 30GB feels cramped. Running out means either deleting things constantly or paying for additional storage.

Data Transfer: The Silent Bill Killer

This is where people get shocked. AWS charges for data transfer out to the internet, and the free tier only covers 15GB per month across all services combined. For context, a single HD video stream uses roughly 3GB per hour.

A moderately trafficked website serving images, stylesheets, scripts, and content can burn through 15GB pretty quickly. Ten thousand page views might seem small, but if each page loads 2MB of assets, that's 20GB right there—already over the free limit.

Data transfer between AWS services and regions also incurs charges in many cases, though some internal transfers are free. The rules get byzantine enough that even experienced developers sometimes get surprised by transfer costs.

RDS Database Limitations

The free tier includes 750 hours per month of db.t2.micro or db.t3.micro RDS database instances—same deal as EC2, enough for one small instance running continuously.

Storage caps at 20GB for database data. Backup storage gets 20GB free as well, but only for automated backups of databases within the free tier eligibility.

Once databases start growing beyond 20GB or need better performance than a micro instance provides, costs start accumulating quickly. Database pricing is often where hobby projects transition into actually expensive infrastructure.

What Happens After Month 12

The transition to paid services isn't gradual—it's immediate. On day 366, all those free tier services convert to standard pricing. That t2.micro instance that was free? Now costs roughly $8-10 per month. The RDS database adds another $15-20. Storage, data transfer, everything compounds.

For projects that have grown during the free period, bills can jump from zero to $50-100+ monthly overnight. Some developers prepare for this by gradually optimizing and understanding costs during the free period. Others get blindsided.

Monitoring Matters More Than Expected

AWS provides billing alerts and budgets, but they require manual setup—not enabled by default. Setting up alerts before exceeding free tier limits saves surprises. The CloudWatch service (which has its own free tier limits) can monitor usage patterns and predict when services will exceed thresholds.

Checking the billing dashboard regularly during those first twelve months provides insight into usage patterns and cost trajectory. Most people ignore this until charges appear, which is backwards.

Free Tier Isn't Really for Production

Here's the reality: AWS free tier serves as an extended trial period for learning and testing, not for running serious production workloads. The resource limits and time restrictions make that clear.

Someone exploring AWS Cloud Migration Solutions for actual business applications should treat free tier as a learning environment. The constraints help understand AWS architecture and pricing models without financial risk, but planning to stay within free tier limits indefinitely creates fragile infrastructure.

Strategic Use Cases

Free tier makes sense for specific scenarios: learning AWS services before certification exams, building personal portfolio projects with minimal traffic, testing proof-of-concept applications before committing budget, or developing skills for career advancement.

It doesn't make sense for: actual business websites with real traffic, production databases requiring reliability and performance, applications that need to scale responsively, or anything where unexpected downtime carries consequences.

The Small Print Reality

Amazon's free tier documentation runs multiple pages and includes dozens of specific service limits, regional restrictions, and usage calculations. Most people skim it, assume "free" means "completely free," and learn the nuances through billing surprises.

Reading the actual terms, understanding how usage gets calculated, and monitoring consumption patterns from day one prevents most issues. The free tier is genuinely useful for its intended purpose—learning and light testing. Just not for what many people try to use it for, which is free production hosting indefinitely.

Approaching it with realistic expectations about capabilities and limitations makes it a valuable resource rather than a source of billing frustration.