Why Did I Get Charged for Hours on an EC2 Instance I Didn’t Use?

Don't forget that stopping or terminating an instance doesn't always drop your costs to zero. You could still be on the hook for EBS storage or associated resources. I’d recommend checking your billing details to see if that's why you're still seeing charges.

First off, check the billing console and see what exactly you're being charged for. Sometimes people overlook IPs or EBS snapshots that stay around even after you think you've terminated everything. That could explain some unexpected charges.

If you want to track what's going on, pull the CloudTrail logs for this instance. It will give you a detailed history of when the instance was started, stopped, and terminated. If you're right, those logs can serve as proof when you dispute the charges. Just remember: even if an instance's status changes, you might still be billed for storage.

For further clarity, the billing console is your best friend here. It can break down all the charges. Make sure to look at the exact accrued charges to avoid confusing them with forecasts. And after termination, make sure to release any elastic IPs you've got hanging around!

Make sure to check all regions for any running EC2 instances you might have missed. It's easy to accidentally leave something running in a different region. Also, just a heads up, even when an instance is stopped, you might still incur charges for storage or reserved IPs.