AWS Organizations enables customers to centrally manage their AWS accounts. Since many customers prefer to automate the account creation process, they can leverage CreateAccount API, thereby creating an account vending pipeline. This pipeline standardizes the deployment of policies, roles, and resources across new accounts while managing the complete lifecycle through eventual account closure. Through this automation, organizations can rapidly provision accounts for developer teams while maintaining consistent security controls so that the governance standards are consistently applied from the moment an account is created until it’s no longer needed.

As a customer who leverages AWS Organizations, you rely on account status (Status field) as a key indicator to track and manage accounts throughout their lifecycle – from initial provisioning to eventual account closure. Currently with account status supporting ACTIVE, PENDING_CLOSURE and SUSPENDED values, it lacks a detailed breakdown to manage the account’s lifecycle. AWS accounts labeled with “ACTIVE” status may not necessarily be fully activated and ready for use. Likewise, the “SUSPENDED” status fails to distinguish between customer-initiated account closures and AWS-initiated suspensions due to fraud or payment issues. These challenges highlight the need for a more granular status tracking system to effectively support complex account management workflows.

To support additional use cases, AWS Organizations has introduced an account state (State field). The State field provides more granular details about account readiness, enabling more accurate account lifecycle management. You can now view State information in the AWS Organizations console, and through the DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent API responses with values PENDING_ACTIVATION, ACTIVE, SUSPENDED, PENDING_CLOSURE, and CLOSED. If you manage your account lifecycle programmatically, we recommend incorporating the State information in your account vending pipeline. Consider replacing the Status field with the State field and adjusting the values appropriately in your automated workflows.

Between September 2025 and September 2026, both State and Status fields will be available via DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent APIs. However, after September 2026, the Status field will be removed, and only the State field will appear in API responses. This blog post provides background information and details the associated changes and considerations to help you reference the correct account status information for effective account lifecycle management.

What is AWS account status?

You can see the Status field in the Accounts page of the AWS Organizations console, along with the results of the DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent APIs. There are three different values that are returned in the Status field:

• ACTIVE: An ACTIVE status indicates that an account is either in the process of sign-up or has completed sign-up. Accounts in this status may require some further sign-up information before use, such as, phone verification or billing information.
• SUSPENDED: A SUSPENDED status indicates the account is no longer accessible to you (except for billing and reaching support) and resources are isolated. This could be an AWS initiated or a customer-initiated account closure. You have a 90-day window to reinstate these accounts, protecting against accidental closures or temporary administrative issues. This grace period allows you to recover your accounts and resources before permanent closure, helping maintain operational continuity while managing their AWS environment.
• PENDING_CLOSURE: A PENDING_CLOSURE status refers to accounts recently been closed or are in the process of being closed, but may not yet be in the suspended status.

What is AWS account state?

Account state is an account indicator that provides a more granular account lifecycle progress. It provides the visibility into operational account state within the organization. Granular and continuous tracking of account state provides following benefits:

• Quickly identify accounts that require attention or action.
• Streamline your account management processes.
• Make informed decisions about resource allocation and access control.
• Maintain better overall security and compliance across your organization.

There are five different possible account state values that you can see in AWS Organizations console or DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent API responses:

• PENDING_ACTIVATION: A PENDING_ACTIVATION state indicates that an account has not completed the sign-up process. You will need to complete the sign-up process to activate the account.
• ACTIVE: An ACTIVE state indicates that an account has completed the sign-up process and is ready for use or already being utilized.
• SUSPENDED: A SUSPENDED account state indicates that an account is suspended by AWS.
• PENDING_CLOSURE: A PENDING_CLOSURE state refers to an active account with an open account closure request. Accounts in this state may not yet be in the CLOSED state. This state should be temporary and will change to CLOSED once the closure is processed by AWS.
• CLOSED: A CLOSED state refers to an account closed by the customer or AWS and in a 90-day post-closure period. Accounts can be reinstated during the post-closure period. This state currently maps to the SUSPENDED status. After the 90-day post-closure period, AWS permanently closes the accounts in CLOSED state, and they can no longer be reopened.

Walkthrough

With this change, for a period of one year, you will see the State field and Status field, both in the DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent API responses. However, in the AWS Organizations console and the exported accounts list CSV from the console, you will see only the State field. Post 9 September, 2026, the Status field will be removed from the API response as well.

Let’s try to understand these changes with an example.

1. Let’s consider a DescribeAccount API response for an account that has been closed and is in the 90-day post closure period. Prior to this launch, you would receive the following response.

{
"Account": {
"Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::012345678912:account/o-e17ve6qt3l/012345678912",
"Email": "email@domain.com",
"Id": "012345678912",
"JoinedMethod": "Created",
"JoinedTimestamp": 2020-08-28T09:42:37.732000-07:00,
"Name": "AccountName",
"Status":"SUSPENDED"
}
}

All the details associated with an account are captured in the response. Note that “Status”: “SUSPENDED” is shown with no mention of State field.

2. For the next 12 months, between September 2025 and September 2026, you will receive “Status”: “SUSPENDED” and “State”: “CLOSED” in the DescribeAccount API response.

{
"Account": {
"Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::012345678912:account/o-e17ve6qt3l/012345678912",
"Email": "email@domain.com",
"Id": "012345678912",
"JoinedMethod": "Created",
"JoinedTimestamp": 2020-08-28T09:42:37.732000-07:00,
"Name": "AccountName",
"State":"CLOSED",
"Status":"SUSPENDED"
}
}

3. After September 2026, you will stop receiving the “Status” field in the response from the DescribeAccount API. You will only receive “State”: “CLOSED” in the response, as shown here.
{
"Account": {
"Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::012345678912:account/o-e17ve6qt3l/012345678912",
"Email": "email@domain.com",
"Id": "012345678912",
"JoinedMethod": "Created",
"JoinedTimestamp": 2020-08-28T09:42:37.732000-07:00,
"Name": "AccountName",
"State":"CLOSED",
}
}

4. In another example as shown in Image1, you can click on Export account list from the AWS accounts page in AWS Organizations console and download the CSV. The exported CSV file Organization_accounts_information.csv now uses the “State” field instead of “Status”. If you have any automated processes or workflows that use this exported file, please update them to reference the “State” field. We recommend generating new CSV exports rather than using previously saved versions to maintain current account information.

5. In the AWS Organizations console, access an account’s details page by clicking the AWS accounts to view its account state (State field) and other information as shown in Image 2.

Conclusion

AWS account state will help you track account readiness and closures with more granularity. If you are currently relying on the AWS account status (Status field) as part of your account lifecycle management practices and account vending pipeline, we recommend using the account state (State field) instead. This is because the Status field information is removed from the AWS Organizations console, and will be removed from the DescribeAccount, ListAccounts, and ListAccountsForParent API responses by 9 September 2026. It can help you understand when accounts are provisioned and used throughout the account vending pipeline with more granularity and allow greater visibility. Read the documentation to learn more.