Cloud accounts you need, and what the labs cost

You need your own GitHub, AWS, and GCP accounts. Most labs are free; Lab 5.2 is the first that bills.

Accounts you need

  • GitHub. A free account is fine.
  • AWS. Your own account, where you can create IAM roles and OIDC providers. A personal sandbox account is ideal. Do not use your employer's production account. Lab 5.2 needs admin or near-admin rights.
  • Google Cloud. A project with billing enabled, for Labs 2.4, 3.3, and 5.4.

What it costs

The Labs page labels each lab free, cents, or bills. Most labs only plan and validate Terraform and cost nothing.

Lab 5.2 (AWS Security Services) is the first lab that creates billable resources: CloudTrail, Config, and Security Hub. It costs under $1 if you destroy it within an hour, and $5 to $8 a month if you leave Security Hub running.

Avoid surprise bills

  • Run terraform destroy at the end of every lab that applies resources.
  • Set an AWS Budget alert (for example $5) before you start Chapter 5.
  • Check the AWS Billing console a day after Lab 5.2 to confirm everything is gone.

If a cloud account blocks you

  • GCP wants a prepayment or your billing account is closed: skip the GCP lab and keep going. The AWS labs do not depend on it.
  • You lost access to your AWS account partway through: create a new one and continue from where you are. Individual labs are not graded; the capstone is what counts.

Last updated 2026-10-18

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Still stuck?

Email hello@grcengclub.com with the email address you use for the Academy and a screenshot of what you see. For lab and study questions, the #studygroup_cge_certs channel in the Club Slack is the fastest place to get an answer.