CLF-C02 Billing, Pricing, and Support Practice Question
A company has 10 EC2 On-Demand instances running. They purchase a 1-year Compute Savings Plan for a commitment equivalent to 6 instances. What happens to the remaining 4 instances' cost?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume a Savings Plan covers all usage or that AWS will automatically adjust pricing or terminate instances to enforce the plan, when in reality AWS simply bills excess usage at On-Demand rates without any service disruption.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The remaining 4 instances are charged at On-Demand rates
A Compute Savings Plan applies to any EC2 instance usage up to the committed hourly amount (in this case, equivalent to 6 instances). Usage beyond that commitment is charged at standard On-Demand rates. Therefore, the remaining 4 instances are billed at On-Demand prices because the Savings Plan does not cover usage exceeding the commitment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The remaining 4 instances are free since the Savings Plan covers all usage
Why it's wrong here
Savings Plans do not make all usage free; they apply a discounted hourly rate up to the committed amount. If the commitment covers, say, 6 instances, only those 6 receive the reduced rate. The remaining 4 instances fall outside the commitment and are billed at standard On-Demand rates, so they are not free.
- ✓
The remaining 4 instances are charged at On-Demand rates
Why this is correct
Usage that exceeds the hourly commitment of a Savings Plan is automatically charged at regular On-Demand prices. Savings Plans are purely a pricing discount on eligible compute usage up to the committed $/hour, not an allocation of free capacity. Therefore, the four extra instances in this scenario incur On-Demand charges without any penalty, suspension, or special rate.
- ✗
The remaining 4 instances are charged at Spot Instance rates
Why it's wrong here
Spot Instance pricing applies only to spare AWS capacity purchased through the Spot market, which is a separate purchasing option with no commitment. Savings Plans never route overage to Spot pricing; any usage beyond the committed hourly amount is billed at On-Demand rates. Confusing a Savings Plan with a Spot fallback misrepresents how the discount is applied.
- ✗
AWS suspends the 4 excess instances to enforce the Savings Plan limit
Why it's wrong here
AWS never suspends or terminates instances simply because usage exceeds a Savings Plan commitment. The Savings Plan is a financial commitment that entitles you to discounted rates up to a specific hourly spend, not a hard limit on how many instances you can run. If you exceed the commitment, AWS simply charges the extra usage at On-Demand rates and the instances keep running normally.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CLF-C02 question from scratch — 993 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.