Cloud Practitioner · 12% of the exam

Billing, Pricing, and Support: free practice questions

5 sample questions from our 30-question bank for this domain — answers and explanations included. These are the same scenario-based style as the real AWS exam.

1. A company wants to purchase a third-party security software solution to deploy on their AWS infrastructure. They want to procure the software through a managed channel where billing is consolidated into their AWS bill, and they can quickly deploy pre-configured software on AWS. Which THREE statements accurately describe AWS Marketplace? (Select THREE)

  • A. Software purchased on AWS Marketplace can be billed directly through the AWS account, consolidating vendor charges into the AWS invoice✓ Correct
  • B. AWS Marketplace only offers software from AWS's own portfolio of first-party services
  • C. AWS Marketplace offers pre-configured software that can be launched quickly on AWS services like EC2✓ Correct
  • D. All software listed on AWS Marketplace is available at no additional cost beyond standard AWS infrastructure charges
  • E. AWS Marketplace includes contract-based pricing models such as annual subscriptions and private offers for enterprise negotiations✓ Correct
  • F. AWS Marketplace replaces the need for AWS Support plans by providing vendor-direct technical support for all listed products
Explanation

Consolidated billing (option A) is correct—AWS Marketplace charges are included in the customer's AWS bill, simplifying procurement by eliminating separate vendor invoices. Pre-configured deployments (option C) is correct—Marketplace listings often include AMIs, CloudFormation templates, and SaaS integrations that enable rapid deployment without manual installation. Contract pricing models (option E) is correct—AWS Marketplace supports multiple pricing models including annual subscriptions, pay-as-you-go, free trials, and private offers negotiated between buyers and sellers. First-party only (option B) is wrong—AWS Marketplace is specifically a platform for third-party independent software vendors (ISVs); AWS's own services are accessed through the console, not the Marketplace. No additional cost (option D) is wrong—most third-party software on Marketplace carries its own software licensing fee on top of underlying AWS infrastructure costs. Replacing Support plans (option F) is wrong—AWS Marketplace vendors may offer their own support, but this is entirely separate from AWS Support plans, which cover AWS infrastructure and services.

2. A retail company runs a batch data processing workload every night between 2 AM and 5 AM. The workload is fault-tolerant and can be restarted if interrupted. The company wants to minimize EC2 compute costs for this job. Which purchasing option should they use?

  • A. On-Demand Instances
  • B. Reserved Instances (Standard, 1-year)
  • C. Spot Instances✓ Correct
  • D. Savings Plans (Compute)
Explanation

Spot Instances are correct because they offer up to 90% discount off On-Demand pricing and are ideal for fault-tolerant, interruption-tolerant workloads like batch processing. Since the job can be restarted if interrupted, the risk of Spot interruption is acceptable. On-Demand Instances have no discount and are best for short-term, unpredictable workloads—not for cost-minimization on a repeatable batch job. Reserved Instances provide significant savings but require a 1- or 3-year commitment; since the batch job runs only 3 hours per night, committing to full reserved capacity 24/7 is wasteful. Savings Plans (Compute) also require a 1- or 3-year hourly spend commitment and would provide less savings than Spot for a workload that can tolerate interruptions.

3. A company currently pays $500,000 per year to run its own data center, including hardware refresh, power, cooling, and facilities staff. A cloud consultant claims migrating to AWS will reduce costs. Which AWS tool is specifically designed to help the company build a formal business case by comparing their current on-premises total cost of ownership against projected AWS costs?

  • A. AWS Cost Explorer
  • B. AWS Migration Hub
  • C. AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator (AWS Pricing Calculator migration estimate)✓ Correct
  • D. AWS Budgets
Explanation

The AWS TCO Calculator (now incorporated into the AWS Pricing Calculator as a migration/comparison estimate feature) is specifically designed to help organizations compare the full cost of running workloads on-premises versus on AWS. It accounts for hardware, software licensing, data center facilities, power, cooling, and IT labor costs to produce a side-by-side comparison — exactly what this company needs to build a migration business case. AWS Cost Explorer analyzes existing AWS spending and trends but cannot compare on-premises costs to AWS costs; it has no on-premises input fields. AWS Migration Hub tracks the progress of application migrations to AWS but does not perform financial cost comparisons. AWS Budgets sets cost and usage alerts for active AWS accounts and is not a cost comparison or business case tool.

4. A SaaS company needs a detailed, line-item breakdown of every AWS charge—including resource IDs, usage types, and cost allocation tags—for ingestion into their internal financial reporting system. Which AWS billing tool should they configure?

  • A. AWS Cost Explorer with hourly granularity enabled
  • B. AWS Budgets with a cost budget report
  • C. AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) delivered to an S3 bucket✓ Correct
  • D. AWS Pricing Calculator export
Explanation

AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is correct because it is the most comprehensive billing dataset AWS offers, providing hourly or daily line items for every resource, including resource IDs, usage quantities, rates, cost allocation tags, and Reserved Instance/Savings Plan amortization. It is designed to be delivered to an S3 bucket for downstream processing. AWS Cost Explorer with hourly granularity provides useful visualizations and filtered data, but it does not expose the full raw, line-item detail needed for custom financial systems and cannot be directly ingested as a raw data file. AWS Budgets reports provide alerts and summaries based on thresholds—they are not a source of granular billing data. AWS Pricing Calculator is a pre-deployment estimation tool; it produces estimates for planned architectures, not actual usage data.

5. A company is evaluating the cost of migrating its on-premises data center to AWS. The team wants to compare their current total on-premises infrastructure costs—including hardware, facilities, and IT staff—against the projected AWS costs. Which tool is designed to help with this analysis?

  • A. AWS Cost Explorer
  • B. AWS Migration Hub
  • C. AWS Pricing Calculator
  • D. AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator✓ Correct
Explanation

The AWS TCO Calculator is correct because it is specifically designed to compare the full cost of running workloads on-premises (including hardware procurement, data center space, power, cooling, and IT labor) versus running the equivalent workloads on AWS, helping justify a migration business case. AWS Cost Explorer analyzes existing AWS spending—it has no mechanism to input or model on-premises costs for comparison. AWS Migration Hub tracks the progress of application migrations to AWS; it is an operational tool, not a cost comparison tool. AWS Pricing Calculator estimates the monthly cost of AWS services for a planned architecture, but it does not model or include on-premises costs for comparison—making it insufficient for a full TCO analysis.

25 more questions in this domain

Practice the full bank with instant grading, flashcards, and a timed mock exam.

Start practicing free