[smackeyacky]

I know it's easy to get lazy about checking your AWS billing dashboard but I do it once a week - you can set up alerts and whatnot but I find it easier just to go look at the current usage to make sure nothing has gone awry.

[danial]

I agree that you have to make it a daily or weekly habit to check because 30 days is too long a time to incur costs you're not aware of. That's why I built Billgist.com, same idea but it sends a daily email with usage amount right in the subject, like: $16.56 XYZAccount – Daily AWS billing alert.

[digitalsushi]

I think the point is that someone could bankrupt the average hobbyist in an hour or two, if they were expected to pay it.

[danial]

I think that rate of usage would trigger EC2 abuse alerts. Usually it's something that looks plausible but accumulated over 30 days.