Comment by Bogdan Bujdea on "Ask an AWS Developer Advocate!"

Bogdan Bujdea

.NET Developer

Oct 19, 2020

In Azure you have the option to turn off a subscription once your credits run out. For example, if I have 100$ and some Azure service manages to deplete all my money, then that service will be stopped and I won't be able to turn it on or access it until I pay more money. Is there such a thing in AWS? I tried setting a 10$ budget once, but it appears it just sends a notification. In the end I had to pay 100$ by the end of the month so I stopped using AWS because I couldn't find an option to switch off my subscription if I run out of money.

Kris Howard

Developer Advocate Manager at AWS

Oct 20, 2020

Hi Bogdan! Nice to meet you. You're right; there's no built-in way to shut off services on AWS. That's by intention - we wouldn't want to shut off someone's infrastructure/website/applications just because their usage was over their estimated spend. Most people find estimation really difficult - that's where the elasticity of the cloud comes in, so you pay for what you use and your site doesn't fall over if your traffic takes off.

I actually host some personal sites on AWS that I pay for myself. You can set up budget notifications, as you've mentioned, but it's on you to actually do something when you hit them. Mine let me know when I've used 50% and 75% of my planned budget.

It's also worth mentioning that you can get alerts on your Free Tier usage too. The documentation is here: docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/abou…

Bogdan Bujdea

.NET Developer

Oct 20, 2020

Kris Howard thank you for the reply. I understand what you're saying and indeed, in most cases you wouldn't want your business to shutdown just because you have a spike in sales or something like that :)

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