AWS Billing Glitch Shows Some Customers Owed Billions

Amazon Web Services customers saw billing estimates on Friday that showed charges reaching billions of dollars for services they had not used. The company said the estimates began appearing after a change to its billing computation subsystem late Thursday. It added that the figures do not represent actual usage or charges.

One customer reported an estimate near $2.5 billion for the current month. Other users posted screenshots showing amounts from several million dollars to more than $100 billion. The AWS Service Health Dashboard described the problem as global and said it began displaying incorrect estimated billing data at 10:38 p.m. EDT on July 16.

Amazon stated it investigated the issue and identified the root cause as an error with unit pricing in the estimated billing computation subsystem. It paused estimated billing computations and began rolling back the recent change. The company said it expects the issue to be resolved by the weekend and that no customer action is required.

“The billing estimates do not reflect actual usage and charges.”

Amazon spokesperson Aisha Johnson referred inquiries to the company status page and did not provide additional details on whether any accounts were suspended.

Affected users described the alerts as jarring.

One account holder said monthly spend had never exceeded two cents in six years of use. Some customers posted screenshots on Reddit showing estimated totals that exceeded Amazon's market capitalization. The company said the issue is expected to last several more hours from its Friday morning update.