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An AWS bug turned a 5-cent bill into $2.5 billion [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2026-07-19  

On the morning of July 17, a redditor who normally pays Amazon Web Services about five cents a month opened their inbox to a wall of billing alerts and a running tab of $2.5 billion. Their whole setup was a single S3 storage bucket, untouched since 2023 and not even public. "What should I do?" they asked r/aws. "Is there any way to escalate this urgently?"

They weren't alone. Across the thread, other AWS customers reported the same overnight sticker shock — forecasts of $5 trillion, an estimated bill of $2.5 trillion against a $3,000 budget, an alert for nearly $700 million on an account capped at $10. One user got so rattled they closed their account. It was, as people soon worked out, a billing glitch that AWS acknowledged on its own service-health dashboard.

Best comment: "Remember, if you owe someone $10k that's your problem…but if you owe them $1bn that's their problem."

Previously:

• Stolen Gemini API key racks up $82,000 in 48 hours for solo dev

• A company accidentally spent $500 million on Claude in one month

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/07/19/aws-billing-bug.html

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