- Amazon’s AWS cloud services billing system went haywire on Friday
- Customers saw bills in the trillions
- AWS apologized and is working on a fix
AWS, the cloud platform that serves millions who use Amazon’s servers to power websites and businesses you use every day, just freaked out many of its customers with utility bills that literally ran into the trillions.
“I just saw $1.5 trillion on my AWS bill and my soul left my body,” Bharath_uwu wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, and he wasn’t alone.
AWS does not send invoices. Instead, customers logging into the Billing and Cost Management console discovered the billion and trillion dollar bills and expressed emotions ranging from concern to panic.
I just saw $1.5 trillion on my AWS bill and my soul left my body pic.twitter.com/L0gXYbDio717 July 2026
As Dan Harvey, head of marketing at Learning Through Landscapes, told the Guardian: “I almost had a heart attack when I received an email alert from Amazon Web Services billing for our charity’s school site audit app.”
Some tried to nip the billing error in the bud. Chinmay at X encouraged others to post their highest AWS bills. 10 hours ago he was at $333B.
Others called out AWS for the mistake with less than good humor. “I bet someone must have had a real heart attack. This shouldn’t be legal…,” Mr Doob wrote on X.
Amazon, to its credit, has provided several updates starting around 1:30 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 17, when they first discovered the error: “We are investigating issues with Cost Explorer reflecting inaccurate estimated billing data.”
A few hours later, AWS reported that it had found the culprit: “We have identified the root cause as an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing calculation subsystem, and we are working on a fix,” they wrote on the AWS status page.
But hours later, AWS admitted: “Our efforts to populate corrected estimated costs and usage data are still ongoing. We are progressing more slowly than expected.”
The good news is that AWS is not asking anyone to pay these incorrect fees, and that while this has been a major frustration for services running their websites and businesses on AWS, the cloud system has been working flawlessly and there have been no reports of outages or performance issues as of Friday (if you don’t count the years shaved off the lives of freaked-out customers).
AWS even tried to draw attention to the bug by posting this on X:
“Print error alert: Some customers saw quadrillion-dollar AWS billing estimates today. Small miscalculation on our part (very small). We’re fixing it now. No action required on your part. Sorry for the confusion. Real question: what will you do with those trillions instead?”
Yes, everyone can laugh now, although I’m not sure customers like Harvey, Bharath and others are chuckling along with them.
Was your business affected? How big was your AWS billing error? Tell us the “damage” in the comments below.
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