How to claim an SLA credit from AWS
AWS owes you a service credit when EC2, S3, RDS and other services miss their SLA. Here's the exact credit schedule, the 60-day deadline, the evidence you need, and how to file the case.
When AWS misses an uptime commitment, it doesn't refund you automatically — it waits for you to file. Here's exactly what AWS owes, how it's calculated, and how to claim it before the 60-day window closes.
The short answer
When an AWS service falls below its SLA target for the month, you're owed a service credit worth a percentage of that service's monthly bill — starting at 10% and rising to 30% or 100% for severe outages, depending on the service. You claim it by opening a Billing support case in the AWS Support Center within 60 days of the incident, citing the affected region, the incident timestamps, and the AWS incident reference. The credit is applied to a future invoice after AWS approves it.
What AWS commits to
AWS publishes a separate SLA per service. The ones Ontracko tracks:
| Service | Monthly uptime commitment |
|---|---|
| Amazon EC2 (Multi-AZ) | 99.99% |
| Amazon DynamoDB | 99.99% |
| Amazon RDS (Multi-AZ) | 99.95% |
| AWS Lambda | 99.95% |
| Amazon S3 | 99.9% |
| Amazon CloudFront | 99.9% |
What you're owed
Credits are tiered by how far monthly uptime fell below target. Amazon EC2's published schedule is the reference example:
| Measured monthly uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.0% – under 99.99% | 10% of spend |
| 95.0% – under 99.0% | 30% of spend |
| below 95.0% | 100% of spend |
S3 and CloudFront use a two-tier version (10% below target, 25% below 99.0%); RDS, Lambda and DynamoDB credit 10% / 25% / 100%. You can model your exact figure with the AWS credit calculator — enter your monthly spend and observed uptime and it returns the tier and dollar amount.
The evidence AWS expects
- Your AWS Account ID
- The affected region (e.g. us-east-1)
- The incident start and end times
- The AWS incident reference from the AWS status page
Account-specific confirmation from your AWS Health Dashboard strengthens the claim, because it shows the outage hit your account and not just the public region.
How to claim an AWS SLA credit
- Confirm the outage window and incident ID on the AWS status feed, and note the exact start and end times in your affected region.
- Identify which AWS service breached its SLA and calculate the month's uptime for it, then match it to the service's credit tier.
- Sign in to the AWS account that incurred the affected usage and open the AWS Support Center → Create case → Account and billing → Service: Billing, Category: SLA Credit Request.
- Describe the breach in the case: state the service, region, incident reference, measured uptime, and the credit percentage you're claiming, and attach your AWS Health Dashboard confirmation.
- Submit within 60 days of the incident and track the case — approved credits are applied to a future invoice, not refunded to a card.
Watch the exclusions
AWS SLAs exclude downtime from scheduled maintenance, customer-caused issues (your own misconfiguration), and force majeure. Single-AZ deployments also carry lower commitments than the Multi-AZ figures above, so confirm the architecture the SLA applies to before you file.
Frequently asked questions
What SLA credit are you owed when AWS goes down?
A service credit equal to a percentage of the affected service's monthly fee — 10% when uptime dips just below target, rising to 30% or 100% for severe EC2 outages (25%/100% for RDS, Lambda and DynamoDB; 25% for S3 and CloudFront). It's credit toward a future invoice, not a cash refund.
How long do I have to claim an AWS SLA credit?
AWS allows 60 days from the incident to submit a service credit request — more generous than Google Cloud's 30 days, but still a hard deadline that runs from the outage, not from when you noticed it.
How do I file an AWS SLA credit claim?
Open a case in the AWS Support Center under Account and billing → Billing → SLA Credit Request, citing the affected region, incident reference, and your measured uptime. See the AWS SLA guide for the per-service tiers and a calculator.
Does AWS pay SLA credits as cash?
No. An approved AWS SLA credit is applied to a future invoice for the account that incurred the affected usage, rather than refunded to your payment method.
Which AWS services have an SLA credit?
The ones Ontracko monitors include EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, DynamoDB and CloudFront, with commitments from 99.9% to 99.99%. Most other AWS services carry a service-specific SLA too — check the relevant SLA page for the exact commitment.
Methodology & caveats
The commitments and credit tiers above are transcribed from AWS's published service SLAs into Ontracko's profiles; verify the exact clause on the service's SLA page before filing, since terms differ by service and deployment architecture. Live incident history for AWS is on its status page.
*Ontracko monitors AWS's public status feed, detects SLA breaches, and assembles the claim package with evidence attached. Free — 8% only on recovered credits. See AWS live status or the AWS SLA calculator.*
Related reading
Which SaaS vendors actually pay SLA credits?
Not every vendor with an SLA pays out easily. Here's a side-by-side of the uptime commitments, credit percentages, and claim deadlines for the major cloud and SaaS vendors that owe credits when they go down.
What is an SLA credit, and how do you claim it?
A plain-English definition of SLA credits: what they are, when a vendor owes you one, how much you can claim, and the step-by-step process to get the money back.
SLA credit vs service credit: what's the difference?
SLA credit and service credit are often used interchangeably — but the wording in your contract matters. Here's what each term means and what you're actually owed after an outage.
How to claim an SLA credit from Google Cloud
Google Cloud gives you just 30 days to claim an SLA credit — the shortest window of the major clouds. Here's the credit schedule for Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery and more, and how to file before it closes.
Or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
Stop leaving SLA credits on the table
Ontracko monitors your vendors, catches every SLA breach, and drafts the claim. Free — 8% only on recovered credits.
Start monitoring free