I received an AWS Budgets alert that my budget exceeded the $5 threshold, with a forecasted amount of $3,005,575,870.47—over 3 billion dollars—even though I haven’t used AWS in a year.

After disabling all IAM roles and deleting known resources, the console still shows the same figure. AWS support’s AI chat suggested a billing or metering error, and I opened a ticket.

I later learned my estimate was only $21M (vs. an average bill of ~$0.01). The confusion stemmed from conflicting cost‑management data and a misleading alert that made me worry I’d run up $437 billion.

Despite the panic, the issue turned out to be a bug; I closed my dormant account. The experience highlights the need for clearer alerts and hard spend caps in AWS’s billing system.