A full walkthrough of the new AWS sign-up experience... from the social login options and your automatically created first project, to the console tour, settings, and what up to $200 in credits and six months free actually get you.
What if you could start building on AWS using a login you already have... with up to $200 in credits and six months free, and your very first project set up for you automatically?
That's exactly what the new AWS sign-up experience gives you. I spent some time going through it start to finish, and honestly... it's a lot smoother than what you might remember. So let me walk you through it, show you what's new, and explain how a few things work so you're not caught off guard.
If you want to follow along, here's the sign-up link: go.aws/4hxPFJT
Signing in with an account you already have
The first thing you'll notice on the sign-up page is the email field you're used to... but right next to it, there are some brand new options: Google, GitHub, Apple, and Amazon. So instead of creating yet another set of credentials, you can authenticate with an account you already have. That's one less password to manage.
There are a couple of expandable sections on that page worth reading. The first one lays out the offer... you can try AWS at no cost for up to six months, you start with $100 in credits, and you can earn up to another $100 by completing a few activities. The second one answers "Which sign-up is right for me?" and explains that this path helps you start building faster using preconfigured defaults, with the option to transition to Enterprise whenever you need to.
For my walkthrough, I used the email option so I could show you the full flow... but if you'd rather use one of the social logins, go right ahead.
Name, verification, and password
After you continue, it asks for your name, and then it sends a verification code to your email. One thing to know... it says the code can take up to five minutes to arrive, so if it's not instant, give it a moment before you assume something went wrong.
Once you enter the code, you'll land on the Create your password page. Your password needs to be between 8 and 64 characters, with an uppercase and lowercase letter, a number, and a symbol. When your two entries match, you get a nice green confirmation letting you know you're good to go.
Your contact info and your first project
Next it asks for your contact information. And here's where it gets interesting... after you continue, you'll see a screen that says "Setting up your first project." This part is brand new. It's spinning up your very first project behind the scenes, and it can take up to about 15 seconds. Be patient here... this is AWS doing the setup work for you.
Welcome to the console
Once setup finishes, you're dropped right into your new console, and you get a quick guided tour. I'd recommend actually going through it, because it explains how this whole experience works. Here are the parts that matter most.
The account menu up top. This is where you'll get to your AWS settings, view your project-level billing, switch between projects, and sign out.
The idea of a project. This is the key concept to understand... your project contains an AWS account, along with your resources and settings. Every resource you create in the console belongs to this project, and that project is completely independent from any other projects you might have. So think of it this way... your login is your identity, and each project is its own self-contained space to build in.
Managing projects and your team. You can view all your projects, including ones shared with you by others, and you can manage who has access. One thing to note... all team members share the same level of access to the project's resources.
Billing. You can manage billing for all the projects you own in one central spot and see the cost per project. If you want a deeper breakdown of cost per resource, that lives in the Cost Management console.
AWS managed notifications. This cleans up your health alerts by removing duplicate notifications across projects and giving you one central place to manage subscriptions.
Amazon Q on the left. You can ask Q about your project, your resources, and how to build on AWS, and you can open support cases and get help from a live agent right there. One heads-up... you can't use Q to connect to a local coding agent like Claude or Codex.
When you click Done, you're ready to build.
The settings and projects page
When you click your project name at the top and head to Manage projects, it opens the Settings page at settings.aws.com/projects. This is also part of the new experience, and it's where you'll handle the management side of things.
On the left you've got a few areas. Projects, where you can see all of them. Team, where you manage your members and invitations. And Billing, where you can check your balance, your current plan, and how many credits you have left. Remember... you've already got $100 in credits, and you can complete activities to earn up to another $100.
There's also a Support area, where you can track cases for projects, team, and billing, and see which support plan you're on.
Creating another project
Here's something good to know for later. From the Projects page, you can create a brand new project anytime. Just keep in mind... creating a new project to organize your resources and sharing settings also creates a brand new account behind it. So projects aren't just folders... each one is its own isolated environment with its own account.
Wrapping up
And that's the new experience. You sign in with an account you already have, AWS sets up your first project for you, and you get a guided tour that actually explains how everything fits together. Add in up to $200 in credits and six months to explore at no cost, and it's a pretty low-friction way to start building.
If you want to try it yourself, here's that link again: go.aws/4hxPFJT
I hope you have a great time building... and happy building!
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