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