AWS credits runway calculator: how long will your credits really last?
A runway calculator for startups that treats AWS honestly. Most runway spreadsheets count the AWS bill as $0 while credits last. This one shows the month they run out, the first real invoice, and what that does to your cash.
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Enable JavaScript to run the calculator, or read the worked example below.
Fig. 1 AWS bill per month, next 24 months. Grey is paid by credits, orange is cash.
How the calculation works.
We step through month by month. Each month your AWS usage grows by the rate you entered. Credits pay that month's bill until either the balance hits zero or the expiry month arrives, whichever comes first. We treat the expiry month itself as already expired, which is the cautious reading of an expiry date part-way through a month. After that, the full bill comes out of cash along with your other burn. Runway is the number of months until cash goes below zero.
The "savings" input reruns the same model with a smaller bill, to show how many months of runway a cost review would buy back. It doesn't assume we'd find that much; put in whatever number you believe.
A worked example
- Cash$1,500,000
- Burn excluding AWS$90,000 /mo
- Spreadsheet runway (AWS = $0)16 months
- AWS usage, growing 4% a month$5,500 /mo now
- $60,000 of credits run out inmonth 10
- First full-price bill$8,141 /mo
- Runway with the real bill15 months
A month of runway sounds small until it's the month you were going to close the round in.
One vendor's estimate; the method isn't published. Treat as a rough guide.
Typical AWS spend by stage.
| Stage | Monthly AWS spend |
|---|---|
| Solo or pre-launch | $50 to $300 |
| Seed | $300 to $1,500 |
| Growth | $1,500 to $15,000 |
| Scale | $15,000 to $80,000+ |
Source: SpendArk. Flexera's 2026 State of the Cloud survey puts self-reported waste at 29% of cloud spend (press release).
Seven fixes that usually move it.
- Scale staging and preview environments down at night and at weekends.
- One NAT gateway per non-production environment, or VPC endpoints instead.
- Release unused public IPv4 addresses; each is $3.65 a month.
- Upgrade old EKS clusters before extended support pricing applies, or move small ones to ECS.
- Set log retention in weeks, not "never expire".
- Right-size databases that were sized for launch day.
- Only then buy Savings Plans, for the usage you'll still have.
Want someone to do this against your real bill? See after your AWS credits: a fixed $1,500 review, or 20% of verified savings. The background is in our AWS Activate credits guide.