Some Amazon Web Services customers woke up Friday to a startling sight: a billing estimate showing they owed billions of dollars for cloud services they never actually used. The error, which Amazon confirmed stemmed from a bug in its billing portal, sent shockwaves through the cloud computing community before the company assured users they would not be held responsible. Main Developments Amazon acknowledged the issue on Friday, stating on its AWS status page that inaccurate billing data began appearing as of late Thursday. The company initially attempted to resolve the problem by rolling back a recent change, but by Friday morning it conceded that move had not fixed the glitch. The bug is linked to Amazon's billing computation subsystem, according to the company's update. Screenshots posted by AWS customers on Reddit showed one user receiving a billing estimate close to $2.5 billion for the month, while others reported totals ranging from a few million to hundreds of millions of dollars. Read also: 3 Ways Patreon Is Blocking AI Bots From Scraping Creator Content Background AWS is Amazon's cloud computing arm, serving millions of customers worldwide with services like storage, computing power, and databases. Billing errors of this magnitude are rare but not unprecedented for large cloud providers, where complex usage tracking systems can occasionally produce faulty estimates. Amazon spokesperson Aisha Johnson declined to comment further beyond the status page update when reached by email. The company also would not say whether any AWS accounts had been suspended or paused as a result of the incident. Why It Matters For AWS customers, especially those running lean startups or small businesses, a sudden seven- or eight-figure bill can trigger serious financial anxiety, even if it is clearly an error. The incident also highlights the fragility of automated billing systems and the potential for widespread confusion when they malfunction. Amazon's reassurance that the billing estimates do not reflect actual usage and charges should relieve affected customers, but the episode raises questions about how such a glitch occurred and why the initial rollback failed to correct it. What's Next Amazon expects the issue to last several more hours, according to its status page. The company is continuing to work on a fix, though it has not provided a precise timeline for full resolution. Customers are advised to monitor the status page for updates and to verify their actual usage against the corrected billing data once available.