This domain is only 12% of scored content, but its facts are exact and the questions are easy to get wrong if you only half remember them. The same few comparisons come up again and again: purchasing options, what each Support plan includes, and which cost tool does which job.
Pricing fundamentals
Three things drive most AWS charges: compute (by the hour or second), storage (per GB-month), and outbound data transfer (per GB). AWS has three pricing ideas to know: pay as you go, save when you reserve (commit for a term) and pay less as you use more (volume tiers).
There is a Free Tier with three kinds of offer: always free (for example some Lambda and DynamoDB allowance), free for 12 months for new accounts, and short free trials. Newer accounts may instead get a credit-based free plan, so check the current Free Tier page.
EC2 purchasing options
| Option | Commitment | Discount | Best for | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-Demand | None | None (full price) | Short, unpredictable or first-time workloads, testing | Most expensive per hour |
| Savings Plans | 1 or 3 years of a dollar-per-hour spend | Up to about 72% | Steady usage that you want flexibility on | Pay for the commitment even if unused |
| Reserved Instances (RIs) | 1 or 3 years for a specific configuration | Up to about 72% | Steady-state, predictable workloads | Less flexible than Savings Plans |
| Spot Instances | None | Up to about 90% | Fault-tolerant, flexible, stateless work: batch, big data, CI, rendering | AWS can reclaim with a two-minute warning |
| Dedicated Hosts | On-Demand or reserved | Higher cost | Physical server dedicated to you; BYOL with per-socket or per-core licences, and compliance | You control instance placement |
| Dedicated Instances | On-Demand or reserved | Higher cost | Instances on hardware dedicated to your account, no host-level control | |
| Capacity Reservations | None (can be cancelled any time) | None | Guarantee capacity in a specific AZ at On-Demand price | Charged whether you use it or not. Combine with a Savings Plan or RI for a discount |
Savings Plans types
| Type | Flexibility |
|---|---|
| Compute Savings Plans | Most flexible. Applies to EC2 of any family, size, Region, OS or tenancy, and to Fargate and Lambda |
| EC2 Instance Savings Plans | Locked to an instance family in a Region. Bigger discount |
| SageMaker Savings Plans | For SageMaker usage |
Reserved Instances
- Standard RI: biggest discount, fixed attributes (some can be changed within limits), and it can be sold on the Reserved Instance Marketplace.
- Convertible RI: smaller discount, can be exchanged for another convertible RI with different attributes. It cannot be sold on the marketplace.
- Payment options: All Upfront (largest discount), Partial Upfront, No Upfront (smallest discount of the three, billed monthly).
- Terms: 1 year or 3 years. Three years gives the largest discount.
- In Organizations: RI and Savings Plans discounts are shared across all accounts in the organisation under consolidated billing, so unused reservation in one account can apply to another’s matching usage. Sharing can be switched off per account.
- Scope: a Regional RI applies in a whole Region and gives AZ-flexibility and size flexibility within the family. A zonal RI also reserves capacity in one AZ.
Which one?
| Scenario | Answer |
|---|---|
| Run a database 24/7 for three years | Reserved Instance or Savings Plan, 3-year, all upfront |
| Unknown usage, short trial | On-Demand |
| Can be stopped at any time, big saving needed | Spot |
| Licence tied to physical cores | Dedicated Host |
| Need to be sure capacity exists in one AZ for a launch day | Capacity Reservation |
| Steady spend that may change instance family or move to Fargate | Compute Savings Plan |
Data transfer pricing
- Data into AWS from the internet is free.
- Data out to the internet is charged per GB, with a small monthly free allowance and tiers that get cheaper at volume.
- Between AZs in the same Region: charged per GB (both directions) when traffic uses public or private IPs between AZs.
- Within the same AZ using private IPs: free.
- Between Regions: charged per GB for the sending Region.
- Traffic to CloudFront from an AWS origin is free, and CloudFront delivery rates are usually lower than direct transfer out.
- Direct Connect has lower data-out rates than the internet.
- Design tip: keep chatty components in the same AZ and Region where it doesn’t hurt availability, and use CloudFront to cut transfer cost.
Storage pricing
- S3: you pay per GB-month by storage class, per request, for data transfer out, and for retrieval in the infrequent and archive classes. Colder classes cost less to store and more to read. Intelligent-Tiering adds a small monitoring fee per object and no retrieval fees.
- EBS: pay for provisioned GB-month (and for provisioned IOPS or throughput on some types), plus snapshots stored. You pay for the volume size you provision, not what you use.
- EFS: pay for GB stored, with cheaper infrequent access classes, or provisioned throughput.
- S3 Glacier classes have minimum storage durations (90 or 180 days) so early deletion is still billed.
Billing and cost management tools
| Tool | Use it to |
|---|---|
| AWS Pricing Calculator | Estimate the cost of a planned architecture before you build it (and compare to on-premises) |
| AWS Budgets | Set a cost or usage budget and get alerts when actual or forecasted spend crosses a threshold. It can also trigger actions |
| AWS Cost Explorer | Visualise and analyse past spend and forecast future costs, with filters and rightsizing and Savings Plans recommendations |
| AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) | The most detailed billing data, delivered to S3 for analysis with Athena or QuickSight. Shows tag columns |
| AWS Billing Conductor | Customise billing views and pricing rules for chargeback or showback to customers or business units |
| AWS Cost Anomaly Detection | ML alerts for unusual spend |
| AWS Compute Optimizer | Rightsizing recommendations from usage metrics |
| AWS Trusted Advisor | Checks across cost, performance, security, fault tolerance and service limits |
| Billing and Cost Management console, Bills page | Monthly bill by service |
| AWS Marketplace | Buy third-party software with consolidated AWS billing, private offers and entitlement management |
Quick separation: Pricing Calculator = before. Budgets = alert on a limit. Cost Explorer = look back and forecast. CUR = raw detail. Budgets don’t stop spending on their own.
AWS Organizations and consolidated billing
- AWS Organizations manages many accounts in a hierarchy of organisational units (OUs), with service control policies (SCPs) setting maximum permissions.
- Consolidated billing gives one bill for all accounts through the management account (payer), and it’s free.
- Benefits: a single payment, combined usage earns volume discounts (tiered pricing), and RI and Savings Plans sharing. Each account’s costs are still visible separately.
- SCPs don’t affect the management account.
Cost allocation tags
A tag is a key-value label on a resource (for example Project=Phoenix). Cost allocation tags must be activated in the Billing console before they show up in reports.
| Type | Created by |
|---|---|
AWS-generated tags (for example aws:createdBy) |
AWS |
| User-defined tags | You |
Activated tags appear in Cost Explorer, Budgets and the Cost and Usage Report, so you can split cost by project, team or environment. Tags only apply from activation going forward. Tag Editor helps you tag many resources, and tag policies in Organizations standardise tags.
Quick cost-saving checklist
- Stop or delete idle resources, rightsize, use Auto Scaling.
- Commit with Savings Plans or RIs for steady load, Spot for tolerant load.
- Move cold data to cheaper S3 classes with lifecycle rules.
- Tag everything, set budgets and alerts, review Cost Explorer.
- Use managed and serverless services to cut operations cost.
AWS Support plans
The plans changed in December 2025. New customers now choose between Basic, Business Support+, Enterprise Support and Unified Operations (a designated team of AWS experts for mission-critical workloads). Developer, Business (classic) and Enterprise On-Ramp stopped taking new subscriptions, and existing subscribers keep them until 1 January 2027. The CLF-C02 exam guide still names the classic plans, so learn the comparison below for the exam, and know the new names in case a question uses them.
| Basic | Developer | Business | Enterprise On-Ramp | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, included | Lowest paid tier | Higher | Higher still | Highest |
| Who | All customers | Experimenting, non-production | Production workloads | Production, business-critical | Mission-critical |
| Customer service and communities | 24x7 for account and billing questions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Documentation, whitepapers, re:Post, Health Dashboard | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Trusted Advisor | Core security checks and service limits | Core checks | Full set of checks | Full set | Full set |
| Technical support | None | Business hours email to Cloud Support Associates | 24x7 phone, chat and email with Cloud Support Engineers | 24x7 | 24x7 |
| Response, general guidance | 24 business hours | 24 hours | 24 hours | 24 hours | |
| Response, system impaired | 12 business hours | 12 hours | 12 hours | 12 hours | |
| Response, production system impaired | 4 hours | 4 hours | 4 hours | ||
| Response, production system down | 1 hour | 1 hour | 1 hour | ||
| Response, business-critical system down | 30 minutes | 15 minutes | |||
| Technical Account Manager (TAM) | A pool of TAMs | Designated TAM | |||
| Concierge support team | Yes | ||||
| Infrastructure event management | Extra cost | Yes | Yes | ||
| Architecture and Well-Architected review | Contextual guidance | Consultative review | Yes |
What to remember:
- Basic has no technical support. Developer is for non-production and has email only. Business is the first plan for 24x7 technical support and the full Trusted Advisor checks.
- Enterprise On-Ramp adds a pool of TAMs, and Enterprise adds the designated TAM and Concierge.
- Changing the Support plan is done by the root user (or an IAM user with the right permission after root enables it).
- AWS Support Center is where you open, track and manage support cases.
Technical resources and partners
Where to look things up
| Resource | Contents |
|---|---|
| AWS documentation and whitepapers | Official guides, API references, architecture papers |
| AWS Prescriptive Guidance | Strategies, guides and patterns for migration, modernisation and architecture |
| AWS Knowledge Center | Answers to the most common support questions |
| AWS re:Post | Community question-and-answer site, with AWS experts |
| AWS Blogs and What’s New | Announcements and how-tos |
| AWS Solutions Library and Architecture Center | Reference architectures and ready-made solutions |
| AWS Trust and Safety team | Report abuse of AWS resources (spam, phishing, malware, attacks) |
Health and optimisation tools
- AWS Health Dashboard shows the status of AWS services and events that affect your resources (account-specific, planned maintenance). The AWS Health API lets you pull the same events into your own tools.
- AWS Trusted Advisor gives recommendations across cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, service limits and operational excellence.
AWS Partners and technical assistance
- The AWS Partner Network (APN) is the programme for companies that build solutions or provide services on AWS. Types include independent software vendors (ISVs), who build software that runs on AWS, and system integrators (SIs) and consulting partners, who design and deploy solutions.
- Partner benefits: training and certification, partner events, co-selling and volume discounts, and access to the programme’s funding.
- AWS Marketplace is a digital catalogue to find, buy and deploy third-party software, data and services. Key features: consolidated billing on your AWS invoice, cost management and governance, and entitlement management for licences.
- AWS Professional Services: AWS’s own consultants who work with you to achieve outcomes. AWS Solutions Architects give architecture guidance. AWS IQ connects you with certified freelancers. AWS Managed Services (AMS) operates your environment.
Exam checklist
- Pricing: pay as you go, save when you reserve, pay less as you use more. Inbound data is free. Outbound is charged. Same-AZ private IP traffic is free.
- On-Demand = no commitment. Savings Plans and RIs = 1 or 3 years, up to about 72%. Spot = up to about 90%, can be interrupted. Dedicated Host = licence and compliance. Capacity Reservation = capacity only, no discount.
- Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible. Convertible RIs can be exchanged. Standard RIs can be sold on the Reserved Instance Marketplace.
- Pricing Calculator estimates before. Budgets alerts. Cost Explorer analyses and forecasts. CUR is the most detailed. Billing Conductor customises billing views.
- Consolidated billing: one bill, volume discounts, shared RIs and Savings Plans.
- Cost allocation tags must be activated and show in Cost Explorer and the CUR.
- Support: Basic free, Developer email non-production, Business 24x7 and full Trusted Advisor, Enterprise On-Ramp pool of TAMs, Enterprise designated TAM and Concierge.
- Where to find help: Knowledge Center, re:Post, Prescriptive Guidance, whitepapers. Abuse goes to Trust and Safety. Partners include ISVs and SIs. Marketplace for third-party software.