Practice Billing, Pricing & Support questions for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Every question includes a full explanation of why the correct answer is right and why the tempting distractors are wrong.
26 questions available · easy difficulty · AWS CLF · Free, no registration required
10 example questions with full explanations. Use the interactive practice above to work through the complete set.
Question 1hard
A company runs workloads on EC2 across multiple instance families (m5, c5, r5), multiple Regions, and also uses AWS Fargate. They want to commit to a consistent hourly compute spend to receive a discount but need maximum flexibility to shift between instance types, sizes, operating systems, and even compute services throughout the commitment period. Which pricing option best satisfies all of these requirements?
- A.Standard Reserved Instances (3-year, All Upfront)
- B.Convertible Reserved Instances (1-year term)
- C.Compute Savings Plans✓
- D.EC2 Instance Savings Plans
Correct answer: C
Compute Savings Plans apply to any EC2 instance regardless of family, size, AZ, Region, or OS, and also cover AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda — making them the most flexible commitment-based discount. EC2 Instance Savings Plans lock you to a specific instance family within a single Region, so they don't cover Fargate or cross-Region flexibility. Convertible Reserved Instances allow changes to instance attributes but are still EC2-only and Region-specific. Standard Reserved Instances are the most rigid option with no flexibility for changes, making them clearly wrong for this scenario.
Question 2hard
An application runs on an EC2 instance in us-east-1. During a billing period, it transfers 200 GB from Amazon S3 into the EC2 instance (both in us-east-1), sends 80 GB of data to an EC2 instance located in a different Availability Zone within us-east-1, and delivers 300 GB of content to end users over the public internet. Which of the following correctly identifies which transfers incur data transfer charges?
- A.Only the 300 GB delivered to the internet incurs charges; the other two transfers are free.
- B.All three transfers incur charges because any data leaving the originating service is billable.
- C.Only the 200 GB transfer from S3 to EC2 incurs charges because S3 charges for data retrieved by other services.
- D.The 80 GB between Availability Zones and the 300 GB to the internet incur charges; data transfer from S3 to EC2 in the same Region is free.✓
Correct answer: D
Data transfer into an EC2 instance from S3 within the same AWS Region is free of charge. Data transferred between EC2 instances (or between EC2 and other resources) across different Availability Zones within the same Region is billable at approximately $0.01/GB per direction. Data transferred out to the public internet from EC2 is charged at tiered rates. Option A is incorrect because inter-AZ traffic is not free. Option B is incorrect because intra-region S3-to-EC2 transfers are free. Option C is incorrect because S3 does not charge for data transferred to EC2 within the same Region.
Question 3hard
A growing company requires an AWS Support plan that meets ALL of the following criteria: (1) a response time of less than 15 minutes for business-critical system failures, (2) access to the full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks, and (3) access to a Technical Account Manager. They want to choose the LOWEST-cost plan that satisfies all three requirements. Which support plan should they select?
- A.Enterprise Support✓
- B.Business Support
- C.Enterprise On-Ramp Support
- D.Developer Support
Correct answer: A
The <15-minute response time for business-critical system failures is only available on the Enterprise Support plan — Enterprise On-Ramp offers <30 minutes for that severity, not <15 minutes. Because one requirement specifically demands a sub-15-minute SLA, Enterprise On-Ramp does not qualify despite offering a pool of TAMs and full Trusted Advisor access. Enterprise Support provides a dedicated TAM, full Trusted Advisor checks, and the <15-minute critical response time, making it the minimum plan that satisfies all three criteria. Business Support offers <1 hour for production-down scenarios and full Trusted Advisor but includes no TAM, failing requirement three.
Question 4hard
A company's finance team needs to audit cloud spending at the individual resource level, broken down by custom cost allocation tags, linked accounts, and usage types, with hourly granularity. They plan to load this data into their internal data warehouse for custom dashboards. Which AWS billing tool is designed to fulfill this requirement?
- A.AWS Cost Explorer with hourly granularity enabled
- B.AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) delivered to Amazon S3✓
- C.AWS Budgets with tag-based filters
- D.AWS Pricing Calculator with saved estimates exported to CSV
Correct answer: B
The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is the most comprehensive billing dataset AWS provides. It can be configured to deliver hourly or daily granularity, includes resource-level line items (with resource IDs), supports cost allocation tags and linked account breakdowns, and is deposited directly into an S3 bucket for downstream ingestion into any data warehouse or BI tool. Cost Explorer offers useful visualizations and limited CSV exports but does not provide the raw, resource-level granularity or the automated S3 delivery pipeline required here. AWS Budgets is an alerting and forecasting tool, not a data-export service. AWS Pricing Calculator estimates future costs before deployment and does not reflect actual spending.
Question 5medium
A developer is setting up a new AWS account and wants to take advantage of the AWS Free Tier. Which of the following accurately describe distinct categories of the AWS Free Tier? Select all that apply.
- A.12-month free — services that are free for 12 months starting from the date the AWS account is created✓
- B.Always-free — services that remain free indefinitely regardless of account age, such as AWS Lambda's monthly free request allotment✓
- C.Short-term trials — services offered free for a limited period (e.g., 30 or 60 days) to allow customers to evaluate them✓
- D.New-customer discount — a percentage discount automatically applied to all services for the first year of account usage
Correct answer: A, B, C
The AWS Free Tier consists of exactly three categories: 12-month free (tied to account creation date), always-free (perpetual offers like Lambda's 1 million free requests/month), and short-term trials (time-limited evaluations such as Amazon Inspector's 15-day trial). Option D is incorrect because AWS does not offer a blanket percentage discount for new customers — the Free Tier provides specific usage allowances per service, not a discount rate applied across all services.
Question 6medium
A company uses AWS Organizations and has enabled consolidated billing for all member accounts. Which of the following statements are true about consolidated billing in AWS Organizations? Select all that apply.
- A.All member account charges are aggregated into a single monthly bill paid by the management (payer) account✓
- B.Usage from all accounts is pooled together, which can help the organization reach volume pricing tiers faster✓
- C.Each member account must maintain its own separate credit card on file with AWS
- D.Reserved Instance and Savings Plans discounts can be shared across accounts within the organization✓
- E.Consolidated billing automatically enforces spending limits on individual member accounts
Correct answer: A, B, D
With consolidated billing, the management account receives and pays a single invoice covering all member accounts (A). Pooling usage enables the organization to benefit from volume-based pricing discounts on services like S3 (B). Reserved Instance and Savings Plans benefits are shared across accounts by default unless sharing is disabled (D). Option C is incorrect — member accounts do not need their own payment method; the management account handles all payments. Option E is incorrect — consolidated billing does not enforce spending limits; that capability belongs to AWS Budgets or Service Control Policies (SCPs), which are separate features.
Question 7medium
A FinOps team wants to use AWS Budgets to proactively manage cloud spending across their organization. Which of the following capabilities does AWS Budgets support? Select all that apply.
- A.Send an alert notification when actual costs exceed a user-defined threshold✓
- B.Send an alert notification when forecasted costs are projected to exceed a user-defined threshold before the period ends✓
- C.Provide granular line-item records of every individual API call and resource-level charge for auditing purposes
- D.Track resource usage against a defined usage budget, such as EC2 running hours✓
- E.Deliver scheduled budget reports via email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis✓
Correct answer: A, B, D, E
AWS Budgets supports alerts on actual spend (A), forecasted spend (B), usage tracking against defined thresholds like compute hours (D), and scheduled budget reports delivered by email (E). Option C describes the AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR), which is a separate service designed for granular, line-item billing data at the resource and API-call level. AWS Budgets is focused on threshold-based alerting and reporting, not raw billing record generation.
Question 8medium
A solutions architect is helping a team understand what drives their Amazon S3 costs. Which of the following factors directly contribute to Amazon S3 charges on an AWS bill? Select all that apply.
- A.The total volume of data stored in S3, billed per GB per month✓
- B.The number of API requests made to S3, such as PUT, COPY, POST, LIST, and GET requests✓
- C.Data transferred out of S3 to the public internet✓
- D.Data transferred into S3 from the public internet (ingress traffic)
- E.The AWS Region in which the S3 bucket resides, since storage and request pricing varies by Region✓
Correct answer: A, B, C, E
Amazon S3 charges are based on the amount of data stored per GB/month (A), the number and type of API requests such as PUT and GET (B), data transferred out to the internet (C), and the Region where the bucket is located since rates differ by Region (E). Option D is incorrect because data transferred INTO AWS — including S3 ingress from the internet — is free of charge. This is a key AWS pricing principle: inbound data transfer is always free, while outbound data transfer to the internet incurs charges.
Question 9medium
A cloud financial analyst needs to review the past six months of AWS spending broken down by service, identify which services are driving cost increases, and project next month's estimated spend. Which AWS tool is purpose-built for this task?
- A.AWS Budgets
- B.AWS Pricing Calculator
- C.AWS Cost Explorer✓
- D.AWS Cost and Usage Report
Correct answer: C
AWS Cost Explorer is designed specifically for visualizing historical AWS cost and usage data and generating forecasts of future spending. It provides pre-built graphs, filtering by service or tag, and a built-in forecasting feature. AWS Budgets sets alerts when thresholds are crossed but does not provide rich historical visualization or forecasting. AWS Pricing Calculator estimates costs for planned architectures before deployment, not historical data. The Cost and Usage Report (CUR) delivers raw, line-item billing data to S3 for custom analysis — it does not provide an interactive visualization or forecast out of the box.
Question 10medium
A solutions architect is designing a new three-tier web application on AWS and needs to share an estimated monthly cost with stakeholders before any resources are deployed. Which AWS tool should the architect use?
- A.AWS Pricing Calculator✓
- B.AWS Cost Explorer
- C.AWS Trusted Advisor
- D.AWS Billing Console
Correct answer: A
AWS Pricing Calculator lets you model AWS architectures and generate cost estimates before any resources are deployed, making it ideal for pre-deployment budgeting and stakeholder communication. AWS Cost Explorer analyzes actual historical spending and forecasts future costs for resources that are already running. AWS Trusted Advisor reviews your existing environment for optimization opportunities but does not estimate costs for hypothetical architectures. The AWS Billing Console shows current and historical charges but is not a planning or estimation tool.