- Amazon’s AWS cloud services billing system went haywire on Friday
- Customers saw bills in the billions
- AWS apologized and is working on a solution
AWS, the cloud platform that serves millions of people who use Amazon servers to run websites and businesses that you use every day, simply scared away many of its customers with usage 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 by mail. Instead, customers logging into the Billing and Cost Management console spotted the billion and trillion dollar bills and expressed emotions ranging from worry to panic.
I just saw 1.5 trillion dollars on my AWS bill and my soul left my body pic.twitter.com/L0gXYbDio7July 17, 2026
As Dan Harvey, marketing director at Learning Through Landscapes, told The Guardian, “I almost had a heart attack when I received an email alert from Amazon Web Services with billing for our charity’s school grounds audit app.”
Some tried to take the billing error in stride. Chinmay on X encouraged others to post their highest AWS bills. 10 hours ago, it was at $333 billion.
Others criticized AWS for the error 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.
To its credit, Amazon has been delivering multiple updates starting at 1:30 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 17, when they first spotted the error: “We are investigating issues with Cost Explorer that reflect 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 are working on a mitigation,” they wrote on the AWS status page.
However, hours later, AWS admitted: “Our efforts to replenish corrected estimated cost and usage data are still underway. We are making slower progress than anticipated.”
The good news is that AWS isn’t asking anyone to pay these incorrect fees, and while this has been a huge frustration for services that run their websites and businesses on AWS, the cloud system has been running smoothly and there have been no reports of outages or performance issues as of Friday (if you don’t count the years it took the lives of scared customers).
AWS has even tried to downplay the bug, posting this on X:
“Typo alert: Some customers saw billion-dollar AWS billing estimates today. Slight miscalculation on our part (very slight). We’re fixing it now. You don’t need to do anything. Sorry for the confusion. Real question: What will you do with those billions instead?”
Yes, everyone can laugh now, although I’m not sure customers like Harvey, Bharath and others will laugh with them.
Has your business been affected? How big was your AWS billing mistake? Let us know the “damage” in the comments below.
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