Amazon Fixes AWS Billing Bug That Showed Customers Owed Billions

Amazon is working to resolve a billing system bug that incorrectly showed some Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers owing millions or even billions of dollars for cloud services they never used. The issue affected billing estimates displayed in the AWS billing portal, prompting confusion among customers who received unexpectedly high charges.

The company said it first detected inaccurate billing data late on Thursday. An initial attempt to fix the issue by rolling back a recent system change did not work, with Amazon later confirming that the problem was linked to its billing computation subsystem.

Amazon stressed that the incorrect figures did not reflect customers’ actual cloud usage or real charges, meaning users will not be billed the inflated amounts. The company has not disclosed how many customers were affected.

Screenshots shared by AWS customers on Reddit showed the scale of the error. One customer reportedly saw an estimated monthly bill of nearly $2.5 billion, while others received estimates ranging from several million to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Amazon said engineers are continuing to work on the issue and expect the billing problem to be resolved after several more hours. Until then, customers may continue to see inaccurate billing estimates in the AWS portal.