AWS credits are promotional coupons offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to allow new customers to use their AWS services for a certain amount of time. Credits can be redeemed straight from AWS's billing page and are applied until they are exhausted or expired.
If you're reading this, chances are your AWS credits are about to run out. Firstly, check whether or not you are eligible to receive more credits. Startups can receive up to $100,000 in lifetime AWS credits ($250,000 for qualifying companies with ML workloads), so confirming your eligibility to receive more credits is always the best place to begin.
If you are ineligible to receive more credits, reducing your consumption of AWS resources is the only way to extend the ones you currently have. Bearing in mind that building a good, cost effective architecture is the best way to keep costs low, there are exercises that you can do today to reduce your consumption of AWS resources short of re-architecting your entire organization. A full list of AWS-prescribed cost optimization exercises is available here to view, but included below are the low-touch exercises that can quickly and significantly lower costs:
Leveraging the above exercises is a great way to begin reducing your consumption of AWS resources so you can get the absolute most out of your credits. By the time they run out/expire, you can start building on top of a very cost-conscious cloud environment!
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*The contract terms for Reservation purchases are often non-starters. Companies like Usage AI underwrite Reservation purchases - in the event you've overcommitted to capacity, their platform automatically exchanges the remainder of that commitment to another AWS customer.