AWS expanded the free tier for Bedrock model evaluation jobs through the end of 2026 for eligible accounts.
AWS sweetened the free tier for Bedrock evaluation jobs through year-end. If you are comparing models before you marry a vendor, that is useful. If you were hoping production chat just became free, it did not. Evaluation credits and inference bills are still different animals.
What the expansion covers
The widened allotment is for evaluation jobs on Bedrock—structured comparisons, not open-ended traffic from your app. AWS pointed eligible accounts at a console banner that shows what remains. Eligibility still follows ordinary free-tier account rules. An account that aged out elsewhere should not assume zero cost here without reading the Bedrock eval page.
December 31, 2026 is the published end date for the expanded window. Put a calendar reminder in November if your bake-off tends to slip. Free eval capacity that expires mid-decision is how teams rush a choice they later regret.
How to spend the credits well
Write the rubric before you burn the free runs. Decide what “good” means for your prompts: factuality, latency, tool use, refusal behavior. Run the same suite on each candidate. Do not improvise a new test for every model and then declare a winner.
When the credits are gone, you should already know which model earns a paid pilot. That is the only point of a free evaluation tier. AWS made the runway longer. You still have to land the plane with a checklist.
Guardrails while credits last
Tag every evaluation run with a project name and owner in AWS so orphaned jobs do not burn the pool. Cap concurrent eval jobs in the account. Export the comparison table to object storage the day you finish, because console history is a weak archive. If two teams share an account, appoint one person to approve large eval batches. Free tiers die from friendly fire as often as from real science. AWS extended the runway; governance keeps you from lighting it on fire.