I received an AWS Cost Management alert claiming that my account had accumulated roughly $5 million in charges. The account only contained one S3 bucket from a small personal project created about five years ago, and it had never generated any noticeable costs before this alert. Cost Explorer attributes the charge to S3. I deleted the bucket immediately and opened an AWS Support case. Has anyone else seen this, and what should I do now?
3 Answers
Check the AWS console for any high-severity billing or service event related to this incident. If the account has no matching usage, the displayed amount may be part of a broader AWS billing problem. Save screenshots, timestamps, and the relevant Cost Explorer views, then wait for Support to reconcile the account rather than making more resource changes.
Several people have reported enormous S3 charges like this, including amounts in the millions, billions, or more, without corresponding resource usage. It appears to be a metering or billing-system issue rather than actual consumption. Keep the support case open and ask AWS to investigate and correct the charge.
Deleting the bucket is understandable when you receive a warning like that, but it can make AWS's investigation more complicated because the resource state is no longer available for comparison with its metering records. Tell Support exactly when you deleted it, include the alert and Cost Explorer details, and don't recreate the bucket with the same name while they investigate.
I panicked because I only used AWS for learning and had stayed within the free tier. I’ll make sure the support case includes the deletion time and all the billing information.