CloudCostCompareCloud free tiers explained: what is really free
Every major cloud offers something free to get you started. The word “free” covers three different things, and mixing them up is a common reason for a first unexpected bill.
The three kinds
Always-free allowances. A small monthly amount of a service at no charge, for as long as the account exists. Examples are a number of requests, a few gigabytes of storage or some outbound data. You pay normal rates only for use above the allowance.
Time-limited free usage. A service is free for a set period after you sign up, often twelve months. When the period ends, normal rates start, whether or not you noticed.
Credits. A sum of money applied against your charges, usually with an expiry date. Credits are not a price, they are a payment. Resources keep billing at full rates and the credit absorbs it until it runs out or expires.
Why they are not in our estimates
Our estimates and catalog show list prices without free allowances, for three reasons. The terms differ by vendor and change often. They depend on the account, its age and its country. And they would make two clouds look different for reasons that have nothing to do with the service. A real bill for a small workload can therefore come in lower than an estimate, and the gap is the free allowance.
The exception is where a vendor builds a free band into the published price itself, such as the first block of storage at a zero rate in a tiered price list. Those are real list prices, and the estimator keeps them.
What goes wrong
- The period ends. A resource created in a free period keeps running afterwards at the normal rate.
- The allowance covers one thing, not the setup. A free database instance may still come with charges for storage, backup or a public address.
- A different region or size. The free allowance usually names a specific size or region, and another choice is billed.
- Credits expire. Credits left unused vanish on a date, and a project that ran on them suddenly has a real bill.
- Free allowances are per account. More accounts do not mean more free usage, and some vendors forbid the attempt.
How to use a free tier safely
- Read the vendor’s free-tier page for the exact service, size and region.
- Write down the date the free period ends, and set a reminder before it.
- Set a budget alert at a very low amount. See budgets and cost alerts.
- Delete what you created when you finish experimenting.
- Check the bill after the first month, with the method in how to read a cloud bill.
More of the usual pitfalls are in cloud cost mistakes to avoid. The overview of how clouds charge is in cloud pricing models explained.