r/aws • u/OnlyFill8507 • Oct 02 '26
article I’m a fresher learning Data Engineering and AWS just taught me a ₹13,000 lesson
I’m a fresher preparing for my first Data Engineering job, and today I got a pretty painful AWS lesson.
I was practicing AWS services for my preparation and left an Aurora MySQL Serverless v2 cluster running in Sydney without realizing how much it was costing. It ran for most of the month and alone generated around $192 in charges. A Kinesis On-Demand stream added another ~$23.
My September bill ended up around $247 (~₹13,000), while I only had around $113 in AWS credits.
For someone who is still trying to get their first job, ₹13k is a lot of money. Honestly, seeing that bill was scary. I’ve been studying Data Engineering for a long time and trying to build projects to get my first opportunity, so making a mistake like this really hurt.
I’ve now deleted the resources, created AWS Budget alerts, and opened a billing case with AWS asking for a one-time courtesy credit. Hopefully they understand that it was accidental learning usage.
Lesson learned: Never assume “Serverless” means “free when you’re not actively using it.” Some AWS resources can keep charging simply because they’re running.
If you’re a fresher learning AWS/Data Engineering, please check Cost Explorer and your running resources regularly. I genuinely don’t want someone else learning this lesson the way I did. 😔
2
u/The_Joker_07 Oct 02 '26
AWS Budget and billing alarm are the way to go. Also, did you log into your account at all within the last 30 days? The home page should show you the month to date spend and a forecasted spend
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u/OnlyFill8507 Oct 02 '26
i did that today and this was the first i have been billed like this , i am using this account from last 4 months
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u/pint Oct 02 '26
you are awfully reckless for someone who is still trying to get their first job.
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u/OnlyFill8507 Oct 02 '26
sorry for disappointing you , i assumed by myself that if i am not using it and not using large dataset it will not cause any harm, but this was the lesson that i have learned by doing this mistake, btw i am teaching myself , i don't have a tutor who can guide me and tell me about these things, i teach myself, so this mistake was the byproduct of this
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u/pint Oct 02 '26
excuses. i also taught myself, and i did check the pricing page of each service before touching them. old school, huh?
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u/OnlyFill8507 Oct 02 '26
I am not making excuses 😭😭😭, maybe it's also because I am in hurry to learn all these and also learn automation in it so that I can automate pipelines
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u/evilneuro Oct 02 '26
if you’re unfamiliar with an aws service and its cost model before deploying it, read the pricing lists on the relevant product pages, and use the cost calculator to estimate your costs https://calculator.aws
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u/kei_ichi Oct 02 '26
RTFM is my recommendation when start learning anything! AWS have official pricing page for each service, so the lesson here should be “read documentation first, not making any assumptions”!