Amazon WorkSpaces now offers a Free Tier for new customers

Amazon WorkSpaces now offers a Free Tier for first time Workspaces customers, designed to allow hands-on experience of the service at no cost. The Free Tier offer provides two Standard bundle WorkSpaces for up to 40 hours of combined use per month, for two calendar months, from the time you create your first WorkSpace.

To take advantage of the WorkSpaces Free Tier, launch a Free Tier eligible Standard bundle WorkSpace using the WorkSpaces management console, by following the steps outlined in the Quick Setup guide. The Standard bundle WorkSpace offers a cloud desktop with 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of memory, and 50 GB of SSD-based storage, and you can choose between a Windows 10 or Windows 7 Desktop Experience, both powered by Windows Server. As with all bundles, your WorkSpace comes with Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox, and 7-Zip pre-installed, and access to Amazon WorkDocs with 50 GB included storage.

Usage time accrues while you’re actively using your WorkSpace as well as the time it takes to stop after a specified period of inactivity, which by default is set to an hour. If you exceed the Free Tier limits, you are charged the standard Amazon WorkSpaces hourly rates for the additional resources that you use. At the end of two calendar months, the WorkSpaces you launched in the Free Tier will automatically be billed at standard hourly rates. For more information, see, Amazon WorkSpaces Pricing.

To qualify for the Free Tier, your Amazon WorkSpaces need to run in the AutoStop running mode. You can change the running mode of your WorkSpaces to AlwaysOn, but this action converts your WorkSpaces to monthly billing, and your Free Tier period will end. To learn more about how billing works when switching running modes, see the Amazon WorkSpaces FAQ.

The Amazon WorkSpaces Free Tier is available today in all AWS Regions where the service is offered. To get started, log in to the AWS management console, and launch a Free Tier eligible WorkSpace.