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AWS Support Plans

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AWS Support Plans

⚠️ Major Update: AWS Support Plans Transformation (Dec 2025)

At AWS re:Invent 2025, AWS announced a fundamental restructuring of Support Plans. The legacy Developer, Business, and Enterprise On-Ramp plans will be discontinued on January 1, 2027.

New plan structure (effective 2026):

  • Basic (Free) — included for all AWS customers
  • Business Support+ — replaces Developer and Business (starts at $29/month)
  • Enterprise Support — enhanced with AI capabilities (starts at $5,000/month)
  • Unified Operations — new highest tier (starts at $50,000/month)

Legacy plan customers can transition anytime before Jan 1, 2027. Enterprise On-Ramp customers are being automatically upgraded to Enterprise Support throughout 2026.

NOTE – This post is relevant for AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification and AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification

Current AWS Support Plans (2026+)

AWS now offers three paid support plans plus the free Basic tier. Each plan combines AI-powered capabilities with AWS expert guidance, representing a shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive issue prevention.

Basic (Free)

  • Included for all AWS customers at no cost
  • 24×7 access to customer service, documentation, whitepapers, and re:Post community forums
  • Access to AWS Health Dashboard (formerly Personal Health Dashboard) for service health notifications
  • Access to limited AWS Trusted Advisor checks (core security checks)
  • Access to AWS Support Automation Workflows for self-service troubleshooting

Business Support+

Replaces the legacy Developer and Business Support plans. Starts at $29/month per account.

  • 24×7 access to AWS Cloud Support Engineers via email, chat & phone
  • AI-powered contextual troubleshooting that understands your specific AWS environment
  • Allows Unlimited contacts/Unlimited cases (IAM supported)
  • Access to full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks
  • Access to AWS Health Dashboard & Health API
  • Access to AWS DevOps Agent for automated incident investigation and prevention
  • Access to AWS Support App in Slack
  • Proactive health checks with actionable recommendations across security, performance, cost, and reliability
  • Case Severity/Response times SLA:
    • General guidance < 24 hours
    • System impaired < 12 hours
    • Production system impaired < 4 hours
    • Business-critical system down < 30 minutes
  • Pricing: Greater of $29/month per account OR tiered % of monthly AWS charges (9% up to $10K, 7% $10K-$80K, 5% $80K-$250K, 3% over $250K)

Enterprise Support

Enhanced with AI capabilities. Starts at $5,000/month (reduced from previous $15,000 minimum).

  • 24×7 access to Sr. Cloud Support Engineers via email, chat & phone
  • Designated Technical Account Manager (TAM) for strategic guidance and proactive engagement
  • AI-powered intelligent troubleshooting with personalized context delivery to support engineers
  • AWS Security Incident Response — automated security monitoring, triage, and 24/7 access to security engineers (included at no additional cost)
  • Access to AWS DevOps Agent with 75% credits of monthly support charge
  • TAM-led Well-Architected Reviews and architectural assessments
  • Access to AWS Trusted Advisor Priority with 465+ best practice checks across 56+ services
  • Account assistance by Support Concierge
  • Access to online self-paced labs and TAM-led workshops
  • AWS Countdown Premium available as add-on ($10K/project/month) for critical launches, migrations, and peak events
  • Case Severity/Response times SLA:
    • General guidance < 24 hours
    • System impaired < 12 hours
    • Production system impaired < 4 hours
    • Production system down < 1 hour
    • Business-critical system down < 15 minutes
  • Pricing: Greater of $5,000/month OR tiered % of monthly AWS charges (10% up to $150K, 7% $150K-$500K, 5% $500K-$1M, 3% over $1M)

Unified Operations

New highest-tier plan for mission-critical enterprise operations. Starts at $50,000/month.

  • Designated core team: Technical Account Manager (TAM), Domain Specialist Engineers (DSE), and Senior Billing & Account Specialist
  • On-demand experts for migrations, incident management, and security
  • 24/7 proactive security and performance monitoring with early incident detection
  • AWS Security Incident Response with AI-powered investigation included
  • AWS DevOps Agent with 100% credits of monthly support charge
  • AWS Countdown Premium included at no additional cost
  • AWS Incident Detection and Response included at no additional cost
  • Expert-led resilience reviews, GameDay exercises, and chaos engineering
  • Critical Workload Reviews and comprehensive architecture assessments
  • Support via preferred collaboration channels (follow-the-sun model)
  • Case Severity/Response times SLA:
    • General guidance < 24 hours
    • System impaired < 12 hours
    • Production system impaired < 4 hours
    • Production system down < 1 hour
    • Business-critical system down < 5 minutes
  • Pricing: Greater of $50,000/month OR tiered % of monthly AWS charges (10% up to $1M, 6% $1M-$5M, 5% over $5M). Minimum 90-day commitment.

Legacy Plans (Discontinued January 1, 2027)

⚠️ The following plans are being discontinued on January 1, 2027. Existing customers can continue using them until that date or transition to new plans anytime.

Developer (Legacy)

Migrates to → Business Support+

  • Business hours access to Cloud Support Associates via email
  • One primary contact can open Unlimited cases
  • Case Severity/Response times SLA (in business hours):
    • General guidance < 24 business hours
    • System impaired < 12 business hours
  • General Guidance on Architecture support

Business (Legacy)

Migrates to → Business Support+

  • 24×7 access to Cloud Support Engineers via email, chat & phone
  • Unlimited contacts/Unlimited cases (IAM supported)
  • Full set of Trusted Advisor checks
  • Case Severity/Response times:
    • General guidance < 24 hours
    • System impaired < 12 hours
    • Production system impaired < 4 hours
    • Production system down < 1 hour

Enterprise On-Ramp (Legacy)

Automatically upgrading to → Enterprise Support throughout 2026

  • Access to a pool of Technical Account Managers (not designated)
  • Consultative architectural guidance
  • Case Severity/Response times:
    • Business-critical system down < 30 minutes

Key Features Comparison

Feature Basic Business Support+ Enterprise Unified Operations
Critical response time — 30 min 15 min 5 min
24×7 expert access — ✓ ✓ ✓
Technical Account Manager — — Designated Designated + DSE team
AI-powered troubleshooting — ✓ ✓ ✓
AWS Security Incident Response — — Included Included
AWS DevOps Agent — 30% credits 75% credits 100% credits
Trusted Advisor Core checks Full checks Priority (465+ checks) Priority (465+ checks)
Well-Architected Reviews — — TAM-led Expert-led (comprehensive)
Minimum monthly cost Free $29/account $5,000 $50,000

AWS Support Plan Key Services

AWS Health Dashboard

  • Previously known as Personal Health Dashboard (PHD) and Service Health Dashboard (SHD)
  • Unified dashboard combining service health and account-specific health events
  • Provides personalized notifications about AWS service events affecting your resources
  • Available to all AWS customers (Basic and above)
  • Programmatic access via AWS Health API available with Business Support+ and above

AWS Trusted Advisor

  • Provides real-time recommendations across cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and operational excellence
  • Basic/Free: Core security checks only
  • Business Support+: Full set of Trusted Advisor checks
  • Enterprise/Unified Operations: Trusted Advisor Priority with 465+ checks across 56+ services, curated by TAM

AWS DevOps Agent

  • AI-powered operations teammate that autonomously investigates incidents 24/7
  • Provides proactive recommendations to prevent future outages
  • One-click case creation with full investigation context for AWS Support Engineers
  • Available to Business Support+ (30% credits), Enterprise (75% credits), Unified Operations (100% credits)

AWS Security Incident Response

  • Automated security finding monitoring and triage across GuardDuty and Security Hub
  • AI-powered investigation and containment capabilities
  • 24/7 access to AWS Security Incident Response engineers
  • Included with Enterprise and Unified Operations at no additional cost

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Which AWS support plan has a designated technical account manager assigned for proactive guidance?
    1. AWS Basic support plan
    2. AWS Business Support+ plan
    3. AWS Enterprise Support plan
    4. AWS Unified Operations plan

    Note: Both Enterprise and Unified Operations have a designated TAM, but Enterprise is the first tier to include one.

  2. Which feature is available for all the AWS support plans?
    1. Technical Account Manager
    2. AWS DevOps Agent
    3. 24×7 access to customer service and AWS Health Dashboard
    4. AI-powered troubleshooting
  3. A company needs 24/7 access to AWS Support Engineers and AI-powered contextual troubleshooting at the lowest cost. Which AWS Support plan should they choose?
    1. Basic
    2. Business Support+
    3. Enterprise Support
    4. Unified Operations
  4. Which AWS Support plan provides a 5-minute response time for business-critical system failures?
    1. Business Support+
    2. Enterprise Support
    3. Unified Operations
    4. Basic
  5. What happens to customers on the legacy AWS Developer Support plan after January 1, 2027?
    1. They are automatically upgraded to Enterprise Support
    2. They lose all support access
    3. The plan is discontinued; they should upgrade to Business Support+ before that date
    4. They are moved to Basic support
  6. Which AWS Support plan includes AWS Security Incident Response at no additional cost?
    1. Basic
    2. Business Support+
    3. Enterprise Support
    4. Developer (Legacy)
  7. A startup needs AWS Support with expert access and the lowest minimum monthly cost. Which plan should they choose?
    1. Enterprise Support ($5,000/month minimum)
    2. Business Support+ ($29/month per account minimum)
    3. Unified Operations ($50,000/month minimum)
    4. Basic (free, no expert access)
  8. Which team members are included as part of the designated core team in the AWS Unified Operations plan? (Select TWO)
    1. Technical Account Manager (TAM)
    2. Solutions Architect
    3. Domain Specialist Engineers (DSE)
    4. AWS Account Executive

References

AWS Support Tiers – Certification

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 1 Comment

AWS Support Tiers Plan

AWS provides Four Support tiers and is per AWS Account (except Enterprise)
    • Basic
        • Customer Service: one-on-one responses to account and billing questions
        • Support forums
        • Service health checks
      • Documentation, whitepapers, and best-practice guides
    • Developer
        • All the features from Basic Support Tier
        • Best-practice guidance
        • Client-side diagnostic tools
      • Building-block architecture support: guidance on how to use AWS products, features, and services together
    • Business
        • Phone/Email/Chat support,  1 hour response time
        • All the features from Developer Support Tier
        • Use-case guidance: what AWS products, features, and services to use to best support your specific needs
        • IAM for controlling individuals’ access to AWS Support
        • AWS Trusted Advisor, which inspects customer environments and identifies opportunities to save money, close security gaps, and improve system reliability and performance
        • An API for interacting with Support Center and Trusted Advisor, allowing for automated support case management and Trusted Advisor operations
      • Third-party software support: help with EC2 instance operating systems as well as the configuration and performance of the most popular third-party software components on AWS
  • Enterprise
      • 15 min response time, dedicated Technical Account Manager
      • All the features from Business Support Tier
      • Application architecture guidance: consultative partnership supporting specific use cases and applications
      • Infrastructure event management: short-term engagement with AWS Support to partner with your technical and project resources to gain a deep understanding of your use case and provide architectural and scaling guidance for an event
      • AWS Concierge
      • Technical account manager
      • White-glove case routing
    • Management business reviews

Support plan Comparison

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What are the four levels of AWS Premium Support?
    • Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise
    • Basic, Startup, Business, Enterprise
    • Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold
    • All support is free
  2. What is the maximum response time for a Business level Premium Support case?
    • 120 seconds
    • 1 hour
    • 10 minutes
    • 12 hours

References