Stopping AWS RDS Instance to avoid payment

Question

I'm new to Amazon Web Services and to be honest, I have not read the billing rules.
Recently I set up a non-free tier instance and I was shocked because I was billed with enormous amount of money even though I've been using local database for my development.

So I decided to temporarily stop this specific rds instance.

My question is that, should I completely delete it or just stopping the instance would suffice in order for the billing meter to stop ticking ^_^.

Answer 1

just stopping the instance would suffice in order for the billing meter to stop ticking

The price will go down significantly, but you will be charged for storage. To fully eliminate the cost you have to terminate the db instance, and check if you have any existing manual backups or snapshots of it. If you terminate the instance, while keeping the backups, you will be getting charged for their storage.