AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support

AWS Pricing Model - Pay As You Go

Pay only for what you use; no upfront costs or long-term commitments

AWS Pricing Model - Save When You Commit

Savings Plans offer discounts over On-Demand when you commit to 1-year or 3-year plans

AWS Pricing Model - Pay Less by Using More

Tiered pricing for some services; more usage = lower per-unit cost

Cost Drivers - Compute

Pay by time (per hour or per second) from launch to stop

Cost Drivers - Storage

Based on how much storage is provisioned or used

Cost Drivers - Data Transfer

Inbound data transfer is generally free; outbound data transfer is charged; more transfer = lower per-GB rate

AWS Organizations

Centrally manage and govern multiple AWS accounts; consolidate billing; implement SCPs; automate account creation

Consolidated Billing

Feature of AWS Organizations; combines billing across accounts; allows sharing of Reserved Instance discounts and volume pricing

Service Control Policies (SCPs)

Organization-wide policies that restrict what actions are allowed in member accounts; does not grant permissions

AWS Billing Dashboard

Centralizes cost management; shows current charges, usage, forecasts, and detailed breakdowns; manage payments methods

AWS Budgets

Set custom cost/usage budgets; sends alerts when costs or usage exceed defined thresholds; can forecast future expenses

AWS Cost Explorer

Visualize, analyze, and manage AWS costs and usage over time; provides spending trends, patterns, and Reserved Instance recommendations

AWS Pricing Calculator

Web-based planning tool to estimate costs before deployment; compare costs of difference services and configurations; export to CSV

AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)

Most comprehensive set of AWS cost and usage data; detailed hourly/daily line items; used with S3 and analytics tools

Cost Allocation Tags

User-defined tags applied to resources to categorize and track AWS costs on a detailed level

AWS Compute Optimizer

Uses ML to analyze resource utilization and recommends optimal EC2 instance types; helps rightsize resources

AWS Trusted Advisor

Inspects AWS environment and provides recommendations across: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits

Trusted Advisor - Core Checks (All Plans)

Security groups, S3 bucket permissions, IAM use, MFA on root account, EBS public snapshots, RDS public snapshots, service limits

AWS Support Plans - Basic

Free; all AWS customers; access to documentation, white papers, AWS re:Post, core Trusted Advisor checks; no technical support

AWS Support Plans - Developer

For experimenting/testing; email support during business hours;

AWS Support Plans - Business

Minimum for production workloads; 24/7 phone/email/chat; full Trusted Advisor checks;

AWS Support Plans - Enterprise On-Ramp

For production and business-critical workloads;

AWS Support Plans - Enterprise

For mission-critical workloads;

Technical Account Manager (TAM)

Designated AWS expert providing proactive guidance: available in Enterprise On-Ramp (pool) and Enterprise (dedicated) plans

AWS re:Post

Community Q&A platform for AWS questions and knowledge sharing

AWS Professional Services

Consulting service offering deeper, project-based support (migrations, security audits, performance tuning)

AWS Partner Network (APN)

Global community of third-party providers that help build, deploy, and manage AWS solutions; can assist with migrations

AWS Marketplace

Digital catalog of thousands of third-party software listings; find, test, and buy software that runs on AWS; can also sell AMIs or solutions

AWS IQ

Platform to find and engage certified AWS experts for on-demand project help

AWS Activate

Program providing startups with credits, training, and support to build on AWS

AWS License Manager

Manages software licenses and controls licensing costs; tracks license usage

AWS Control Tower

Service to enforce and manage governance rules at scale across all accounts in an organization; uses preconfigured controls

AWS Service Catalog

Created, share, and manage curated catalogs of approved AWS resources; enforce governance consistently across accounts

AWS Health Dashboard

Provides account-specific health information and AWS service event updates; plan for lifecycle events or troubleshoot incidents

Reserved Instance - No Upfront

Lower discount than partial/all upfront; no initial payment

Reserved Instance - Partial Upfront

Mid-level discount; some initial payment

Reserved Instance - All Upfront

Largest discount; full payment upfront for 1-year or 3-year term

Reserved Instance Terms

Available in 1-year or 3-year terms only when purchased directly from AWS

AWS Billing Conductor

Customizes billing rates and creates pro-forma billing for showback and chargeback workflows within an organization

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Speeds up uploads to S3 using CloudFront edge locations; best for long-distance or recurring large file transfers