How to sell unused AWS credits in 2026
A practical guide to what AWS promotional credits are actually worth, what AWS's terms say about transferring them, and how to find a buyer without getting scammed.
If you took part in AWS Activate, won a hackathon, or negotiated credits into an enterprise agreement, there is a decent chance you are sitting on a balance you will never burn through before it expires. This guide covers what those credits are realistically worth, what AWS's own terms say, and how a sale actually gets done.
First, check what you actually hold
Open the AWS Billing console and go to Credits. For each line you should note three things:
- Remaining balance, not the original grant.
- Expiry date, this is the single biggest driver of value.
- Applicable services, many Activate credits only apply to specific services, and some exclude Marketplace purchases, Reserved Instances or Savings Plans entirely.
A $50,000 balance that only applies to EC2 and expires in six weeks is worth dramatically less than a $10,000 general-purpose balance with eighteen months left on it. Buyers price on what they can actually consume.
Read the terms before you do anything else
This is the part most guides skip. The AWS Promotional Credit Terms and Conditions restrict transfer and resale of promotional credits, and the AWS Customer Agreement governs what you can do with your account. Similar restrictions exist at Azure, Google Cloud, OpenAI and Anthropic.
What that means in practice:
- Credits are usually tied to an account, not to you. They are not a bearer instrument you can hand over.
- Some arrangements are permitted and some are not. An account transfer agreed with your provider is a different thing from quietly selling a credit code to a stranger.
- The provider can void credits if it concludes the terms were broken, and it is the buyer who is left holding nothing.
Nobody can promise you a transfer will work, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. Read your own agreement, and if the balance is large, it is worth asking your AWS account manager directly what they will allow.
What unused cloud credits are worth
There is no public index price, and any site quoting you a fixed percentage before seeing your listing is guessing. The variables that move the number are consistent, though:
| Factor | Pushes value up | Pushes value down |
|---|---|---|
| Time to expiry | 12+ months | Under 90 days |
| Service scope | Unrestricted | Single-service or region-locked |
| Transfer mechanism | Clean, provider-sanctioned route | Account handover with unclear standing |
| Balance size | Large enough to matter to a real buyer | Very small amounts |
Discounts on genuinely transferable credits are steep, buyers are taking on the transferability risk, and they price that in.
How the sale actually happens
There is no eBay for cloud credits, and there is a reason for that: the asset is not reliably transferable, so an automated checkout would be selling something it cannot deliver. Real transactions tend to look like one of these:
- Account transfer. The buyer takes over the account holding the credits, with the provider's knowledge where required.
- Managed spend. The buyer runs their workloads through your account under a written agreement, and pays you a percentage of what they consume.
- Negotiated assignment. For large enterprise balances, occasionally the provider itself will facilitate a reassignment.
Each of these needs a written agreement between two parties who have checked each other out. That is slow, and it should be.
Avoiding the obvious scams
- Never send credit codes before payment. Once a code is redeemed it is gone.
- Be wary of anyone who wants to move fast. Urgency is the oldest pressure tactic there is.
- Verify the counterparty. A real buyer has a company, a domain and a track record they will happily show you.
- Use a written agreement, even a short one, covering what happens if the provider voids the credits.
Where WeBuyAPI fits
We are an introduction service, not a marketplace with a checkout. You submit your balance, we review it by hand, including telling you when we think a transfer is unlikely to be permitted, and if we have a buyer whose needs match, we introduce you. Price, transfer method and payment are settled directly between you and the buyer.
If you have an AWS balance you are not going to use, submit the details and we will come back to you within 24–48 hours with an honest read on whether it is sellable.