I received an AWS billing notification showing a balance of around $40,000, even though I barely use AWS and normally see a $0.00 bill each month. I checked my account but can't find any obvious resources or usage that would explain the charge. I've already opened a support ticket, but the response says it may take up to 24 hours. I'm based in Australia and I'm worried this could be a billing system error or unauthorized activity. What should I check or do while waiting for support?
3 Answers
This appears to be part of a widespread AWS billing display issue, with some users seeing absurdly large balances that don’t match their actual usage. Check the provider’s public service-health and billing-status pages for an incident, and keep your support ticket open. Save screenshots of the bill, usage breakdown, account ID, and notification so support can investigate.
It’s still worth treating the alert seriously until it’s confirmed as a glitch. Review the Billing console by service, region, and linked account, then check CloudTrail and your IAM users for unfamiliar activity. Rotate exposed access keys, remove anything you don’t recognize, and enable billing alerts or cost anomaly detection if they aren’t already configured.
The most useful next step is usually contacting billing support through the official support center and clearly marking the issue as an unexpected billing charge or suspected account compromise. Don’t rely only on the amount shown in the email—verify it directly in the billing console, avoid clicking unfamiliar links, and wait for AWS to confirm whether the balance is genuine.
I’m panicking because the amount is believable enough to be mistaken for real unauthorized usage. I’ll document everything and check account activity while waiting for the ticket response.