Cost Management and Pricing

Authentication verifies who you are — proving your identity (username and password, MFA). Authorization determines what you're allowed to do — your permissions and access level. In AWS, IAM handles both: authentication through users, passwords, and access keys; authorization through IAM policies that define allowed or denied actions on specific resources.

CapEx (Capital Expenditure) is the upfront investment in physical infrastructure — buying servers, data centers, hardware. OpEx (Operational Expenditure) is paying for services as you use them — like cloud computing bills. Cloud computing shifts IT spending from CapEx to OpEx, reducing financial risk and letting businesses pay only for what they consume.

Cost Explorer is a tool that visualizes and manages your AWS spending over time. It shows monthly and daily cost breakdowns by service, account, tag, or Region. You can forecast future costs based on historical patterns and identify cost anomalies. Cost Explorer helps you understand where money is going and find opportunities to reduce spending.

The Free Tier lets you explore AWS services at no cost. Three types: Always Free (services always free within limits, like Lambda 1M requests/month), 12 Months Free (free for one year after signup, like 750 hours/month EC2 t2.micro), and Trials (short-term free trials of specific services). It's ideal for learning, testing, and small projects.