AWS Review 2026

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services is the cloud arm of Amazon, running since 2006, and most Indian developers meet it the same way: through a free account that asks for a card. This review answers the question new users ask first, the AWS free tier: what is included and limits, and then covers rupee billing, GST, the Mumbai and Hyderabad regions, and how AWS compares with Google Cloud and Azure for a small team watching every rupee.

What AWS is and what people use it for

AWS rents out computing building blocks by the hour, the request or the gigabyte. You can run virtual servers on EC2, store files on S3, run code without managing servers on Lambda, host managed databases on RDS, put a CDN in front of a site with CloudFront and manage DNS with Route 53. Access control for all of it sits in IAM.

Typical buyers are startups, agencies hosting client sites, data teams and large enterprises. According to AWS's pricing page, the model is pay-as-you-go: no long-term contract, and nothing further to pay once you stop using a service.

AWS free tier: what is included and limits in 2026

Since July 2025 the free offer has been credit-based. As of October 2026 it works like this:

• $100 in credits at sign-up, plus up to $100 more for completing five starter activities, so $200 at most.
• The five activities are launching an EC2 instance, trying a model in the Amazon Bedrock playground, setting up a cost budget in AWS Budgets, building a small web app on Lambda and creating an RDS or Aurora database. The activities guide warns that four of them run up service charges taken from your credits; it flags no charge for the Budgets task.
• 30+ always-free services with monthly allowances that continue on both plans. Lambda's pricing page, for example, lists one million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds a month, and DynamoDB's page lists 25 GB of storage with 25 read and 25 write capacity units per Region.
• Short-term trials for selected services, which start when you switch the service on. AWS's billing guide says these are only active on Paid plan accounts; Free plan accounts get the always-free offers alone.

You then pick one of two plans. The Free plan never bills you, but only selected services work, and AWS blocks things like Savings Plans, Reserved Instances and some Marketplace offers. It ends after six months or when the credits run out, whichever happens first. The account then closes, and AWS keeps your data for 90 days before deleting it unless you upgrade. The Paid plan gets the same credits plus every service, and once credits are used you pay standard rates.

Two catches. The Free plan is only for people who have never had an AWS account. And some actions, such as joining AWS Organizations or setting up Control Tower, quietly move the account to the Paid plan. Credit expiry trips people up because the FAQ is inconsistent: some answers say six months, others 12. The AWS Free Tier Terms (last updated 9 July 2025) settle it. Credits expire 12 months after the account is opened, while the Free plan itself stops at six months. In practice, Free plan users have six months, and anyone who upgrades keeps unused credits until month 12. The Credits page in the Billing console shows your date.

How much AWS costs for a small website

For a basic site, the cheapest predictable route is Lightsail. Its pricing page lists a Linux bundle at $5 a month with a public IPv4 address, 0.5 GB of memory, 2 vCPUs, a 20 GB SSD and 1 TB of transfer. An IPv6-only version of the same bundle costs $3.50. The Lightsail pricing page says you can start on Lightsail for free under the free tier, but neither it nor the Free Tier FAQ spells out the allowance, so confirm in the console before relying on it.

A purely static site (HTML, CSS, client-side JavaScript) can sit on S3 for very little. A WordPress or Node app on EC2 with a managed database costs more, depending on instance size, storage and outbound traffic.

Using the AWS EC2 pricing calculator before you launch

AWS's official estimator lives at calculator.aws. You pick a Region (Mumbai is ap-south-1), choose services, enter instance type, hours, storage and data transfer, and it builds a monthly estimate you can save and share. For steady workloads, the pricing page says Savings Plans cut On-Demand rates in exchange for a one- or three-year hourly spend commitment, tracked later in AWS Cost Explorer. Those commitments are not available on the Free plan, so they only matter once you upgrade.

Always add outbound data transfer (people forget it), and compare the result with a fixed Lightsail bundle.

AWS Lightsail vs EC2: which one to start with

Start on Lightsail if you need one server, and move to EC2 once you need load balancers or autoscaling.

Hosting a website on S3

The S3 docs describe static website hosting for pages with static content and client-side scripts. Create a bucket, enable website hosting, upload your files and set an index document. One important limit: S3 website endpoints do not support HTTPS. For a secure site, AWS recommends Amplify Hosting, or putting CloudFront in front of the bucket. If you want your own domain, the docs walk through doing it with a domain registered in Route 53.

Paying in rupees: AWS India, GST and local regions

If you choose India as your contact and billing address at sign-up, your contract is with Amazon Web Services India Private Limited (AWS India), which was called Amazon Internet Services Private Limited until a December 2022 rename. AWS India handles billing and your invoice total is shown in rupees. AWS's billing docs mention card payments with e-mandate for auto-debit, and invoice or wire transfer for some accounts. Older AWS India accounts are being moved to a newer billing model, with completion expected by December 2026.

On tax, AWS's India tax help page says AWS India charges 18% GST: CGST plus SGST at 9% each for Delhi customers, and IGST at 18% elsewhere. Add your GSTIN in Tax Settings so the tax invoice lets you claim input credit, and Tax Settings also has a field for your PAN.

For data residency, AWS has two Indian regions: Asia Pacific (Mumbai), ap-south-1, enabled by default, and Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), ap-south-2, which you must opt into first. Free tier credits are issued in USD and apply across global regions.

Is AWS secure, and who owns your data

AWS follows a shared responsibility model: it secures the underlying cloud, and you secure what you build on it. Its data privacy FAQ says you own your content, that AWS will not move it out of the Regions you choose without your agreement (except where needed to run the service or comply with law), and that it does not use customer content for marketing or advertising. Most AWS breaches trace back to customer settings, so lock away the root user, use multi-factor sign-in and keep IAM permissions narrow.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: free offers compared

Google Cloud gives the biggest single credit and does not bill during the trial. Azure's 12-month popular services offer is not available to people who sign up directly for pay-as-you-go in India, so read the terms. AWS gives the longest window, and it offers the widest service catalogue of the three, with 39 Regions worldwide according to its infrastructure page.

On which is better: AWS for breadth and hiring (AWS skills are common in Indian job listings), Azure if your company already runs on Microsoft 365 and Active Directory, Google Cloud if you want simple pricing on data and analytics work. On raw pricing, all three move constantly; compare like-for-like with each provider's own calculator rather than trusting a blog table.

AWS certification cost in India

The certification policy page lists exam fees as Foundational $100 (₹8,553), Associate $150 (₹12,829.50), Professional $300 (₹25,659) and Specialty $300 (₹25,659). Rupee payment is accepted only when buying exam vouchers on the Pearson Mindhub store, and taxes may apply. Cloud Practitioner (Foundational) is the usual first step, followed by Solutions Architect Associate.

How to avoid unexpected AWS charges

• Start on the Free plan if you are only learning. It cannot bill you.
• On the Paid plan, set a monthly spend limit (the FAQ says it starts at $20), with alerts at 50%, 75% and 90%. At the cap, AWS pauses the project until next month unless you raise the limit.
• Create a cost budget in AWS Budgets. Monitoring and notifications are free, and your first two action-enabled budgets cost nothing.
• Delete what you are not using: stopped instances still have storage, and unattached IP addresses and old snapshots add up.

Limitations to weigh

The console is dense and service names are not self-explanatory, so the learning curve is steep. Billing is granular, which is fair but hard to predict. The Free plan blocks many services, so serious testing usually means upgrading. Human support needs a paid plan.

Best AWS alternatives for startups

If AWS feels heavy, Google Cloud's $300 trial and always-free e2-micro VM suit early prototypes, and Azure makes sense for Microsoft-centric teams. For a single website or small API, a simple VPS host or AWS's own Lightsail is often enough.

How to get started

Sign up at aws.amazon.com with an Indian billing address to get rupee invoices, add your GSTIN and PAN, and pick the Free plan unless you need a blocked service. Secure the root user straight away. Complete the five credit activities, beginning with the AWS Budgets one, since it costs nothing and protects you. Then build in Mumbai, keep an eye on the credit balance emails, and upgrade before the six months end if you want to keep your resources.