AWS Support Plans Compared: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, and Enterprise

AWS offers five Support plans: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, and Enterprise. The four classic tiers — Basic, Developer, Business, and Enterprise — are what Amazon Web Services (AWS) historically called its primary Support plans; Enterprise On-Ramp was added later as a middle step between Business and Enterprise. Basic is free and automatic on every AWS account, while each paid tier adds faster response times, broader access to support engineers, and more proactive guidance.

The five plans at a glance

Every AWS account starts on Basic Support at no charge. The paid plans are billed monthly, priced as the greater of a flat minimum or a percentage of your monthly AWS usage, so support cost scales with your spend. Here is how the tiers stack up on the dimensions the CLF-C02 exam actually tests:

Plan	Who can open technical cases	Fastest response SLA	Trusted Advisor	TAM
Basic	No technical cases	None	Core checks only	No
Developer	One primary contact, business hours, email/web	12 business hours (impaired system)	Core checks only	No
Business	Unlimited contacts, 24/7 phone, chat, email	1 hour (production system down)	Full set of checks	No
Enterprise On-Ramp	Unlimited contacts, 24/7 phone, chat, email	30 minutes (business-critical system down)	Full set of checks	Pool of TAMs
Enterprise	Unlimited contacts, 24/7 phone, chat, email	15 minutes (business-critical system down)	Full set of checks	Designated TAM

That table is worth memorizing almost verbatim — and then pressure-testing with CLF-C02 practice questions. The exam’s favorite trick is offering a scenario that fits one row and answer choices drawn from the rows on either side of it.

What every account gets free: Basic Support

Basic Support is included automatically with every AWS account, regardless of whether you ever pay for a higher tier. It covers 24/7 access to customer service for account and billing questions, AWS documentation, whitepapers, and support forums, the AWS Health Dashboard for service status and account-specific alerts, and a limited set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks (the core security and service-quota checks). What Basic does not include is the ability to open a technical support case — if your application breaks and you need an AWS engineer, Basic cannot help you. See AWS Basic Support for the full breakdown.

AWS Trusted Advisor deserves a precise definition because it gates two tiers of value: it is a service that inspects your account against best practices in categories such as cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, performance, service limits, and operational excellence. Basic and Developer customers get only the core checks; Business tier and above unlock the full set of checks plus programmatic access through the AWS Support API.

Developer: business-hours help for non-production work

Developer Support is the cheapest paid tier, aimed at accounts that are experimenting, building, or testing — not running production workloads. You get web-based access to Cloud Support Associates during business hours, with responses by email. Response targets are under 24 business hours for general guidance and under 12 business hours for an impaired system. Only one primary contact can open cases, case volume is unlimited, and you get general architectural guidance about how AWS products fit together. Developer does not include 24/7 access, phone or chat support, third-party software support, or the full Trusted Advisor checks. Details in AWS Developer Support.

Business: the first production-grade tier

Business Support is the lowest tier AWS recommends for production workloads, and it is the answer to a large share of exam scenarios. It adds, over Developer:

• 24/7 access to Cloud Support Engineers by phone, chat, and email
• Unlimited contacts able to open unlimited cases
• Response targets of under 4 hours for a production system impaired and under 1 hour for a production system down
• The full set of Trusted Advisor checks
• Third-party software support — guidance on interoperability and configuration for common operating systems and application stacks running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
• Access to the AWS Support API for programmatic case management
• Contextual architectural guidance for your specific use cases

Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) — hands-on planning support for launches and large migrations — is available to Business customers for an additional fee, not included.

Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise: proactive, mission-critical support

The top two tiers shift from reactive break-fix support to a proactive relationship with AWS.

Enterprise On-Ramp is the newer tier positioned between Business and Enterprise. It adds a 30-minute response target for a business-critical system down, access to a pool of Technical Account Managers (TAMs) shared across customers, the Concierge Support Team for billing and account questions, one Infrastructure Event Management engagement per year, and consultative architectural and operational reviews. It suits organizations with production or business-critical workloads that want proactive guidance without full Enterprise pricing.

Enterprise Support is the flagship tier for mission-critical workloads. It provides a designated TAM — a named individual who knows your environment, leads operational reviews, and champions your needs inside AWS — plus a 15-minute response target for business-critical system down, the Concierge Support Team, unlimited included IEM engagements, Well-Architected reviews, and access to training. The distinction between a pooled TAM (On-Ramp) and a designated TAM (Enterprise) is a frequent exam discriminator; the Technical Account Manager article covers it in depth.

Note that only Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise have a “business-critical system down” severity level at all — Business tier tops out at “production system down” with a one-hour target.

How the CLF-C02 exam tests this

• A definitional question asks for the four primary AWS Support plan tiers. The expected answer is the classic four: Basic, Developer, Business, and Enterprise. Distractors mix in invented names (“Standard,” “Premium”) or swap in service names like Trusted Advisor.
• A scenario describes something available on every account at no cost — 24/7 billing and account customer service, forums and documentation, the Health Dashboard, or core Trusted Advisor checks — and asks which of the listed items fits. Anything involving a technical support case is the trap.
• A scenario gives a requirement such as “24/7 phone access to engineers and full Trusted Advisor checks at the lowest cost” and asks you to pick the cheapest plan that satisfies it (Business, in that example). The wrong answers are the tier just below (missing a feature) and the tier above (overpaying).
• A scenario mentions a designated TAM or a 15-minute critical response and asks which plan is required — Enterprise — with Enterprise On-Ramp as the tempting near-miss.

Quick reference

• Five plans total: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, Enterprise; the “four primary” tiers are the classic four, with On-Ramp as the newer fifth.
• Basic is free on every account: billing/account customer service 24/7, docs and forums, Health Dashboard, core Trusted Advisor checks — no technical cases.
• Developer: business-hours email support, one contact, 12-business-hour impaired-system target; for dev/test, not production.
• Business: first tier with 24/7 phone/chat, full Trusted Advisor, third-party software support, Support API; production down in under 1 hour.
• Enterprise On-Ramp: pooled TAMs, 30-minute business-critical response, one IEM per year.
• Enterprise: designated TAM, Concierge Support Team, 15-minute business-critical response, unlimited IEM.
• Paid plans cost the greater of a monthly minimum or a percentage of AWS usage.
• Exam strategy: pick the lowest tier that meets every stated requirement.