Do you get charged for a 'stopped' instance on EC2?
When you stop an instance, it is 'deleted'. As such there's nothing to be charged for. If you have an Elastic IP or EBS, then you'll be charged for those - but nothing related to the instance itself.
No.
You get charged for:
- Online time
- Storage space (assumably you store the image on S3 [EBS])
- Elastic IP addresses
- Bandwidth
So... if you stop the EC2 instance you will only have to pay for the storage of the image on S3 (assuming you store an image ofcourse) and any IP addresses you've reserved.
This may have changed since the question was asked, but there is a difference between stopping an instance and terminating an instance.
If your instance is EBS-based, it can be stopped. It will remain in your account, but you will not be charged for it (you will continue to be charged for EBS storage associated with the instance and unused Elastic IP addresses). You can re-start the instance at any time.
If the instance is terminated, it will be deleted from your account. You’ll be charged for any remaining EBS volumes, but by default the associated EBS volume will be deleted. This can be configured when you create the instance using the command-line EC2 API Tools.