Unable to delete S3 bucket

Delete bucket policy and you will be able to delete the bucket


You are not able to delete it because there is a deny effect on "s3:DeleteBucket" on all principals according to this thread

You can simply follow these steps -

  1. Login as root user. (Not as any IAM user you might have specified)
  2. Go to the S3 console.
  3. Click on the bucket you want to delete.
  4. Under the "Permissions" tab click on "Bucket Policy"
  5. Click on "Delete"

Now you will be able to delete the bucket.

Incidentally, before you click on delete if you take a close look at the last element of the "Statement" array, you'll see what was causing the problem.


You can try this in 2 ways:

First(Recommended): Delete the bucket policy and delete the bucket.

Second: Follow these steps

  1. Create a new Bucket(Do not change anything, keep default).
  2. Go to S3 console where all buckets are listed.
  3. Select newly created bucket.
  4. Click on permissions.
  5. Copy the account id under owner access section.
  6. Go to permissions of old bucket.
  7. Add account using the copied account id.
  8. Now try deleting it.