AWS Cost Optimization: Tips & Tools to Reduce Cloud Costs

Ever wonder if your AWS bill could be smaller?

Navigating cloud costs can feel overwhelming, especially when every service seems essential. But with the right tools and a few smart strategies, you can trim those expenses and get the most from your AWS setup.

This isn’t another list of generic tips — here, you'll find real, actionable insights from hands-on experience to help you optimize your budget without compromising on performance.

Let’s dive in and start saving!

Tools for Budget Optimization in AWS

AWS offers a variety of budget optimization tools:

• Cost Explorer,
• Budgets,
• Trusted Advisor,
• Compute Optimizer,
• Pricing Calculator,
• Cost Anomaly Detection,
• Service Catalog, and more.

Here’s a quick overview of each:

• AWS Cost Explorer (analyzing and visualizing costs)

Cost Explorer provides a clear view of expenses through graphs and reports that break down costs by services, accounts, regions, etc. It also tracks spending trends over time, helping you predict future costs.

• AWS Budgets (create and manage budgets)

Set up budgets across various categories, like total costs, specific services, or projects.

Budgets will alert you when expenses approach set limits, allowing you to monitor actual resource use against the budget to identify potential overspending.

• AWS Trusted Advisor (resource, performance, and security improvements)

Trusted Advisor offers specific recommendations for cost optimization, including adjustments like Reserved or Spot Instances .

It also provides insights for improving infrastructure performance and security, with alerts when approaching service limits.

• AWS Compute Optimizer (analyzing resource usage and optimization)

Compute Optimizer assesses resource performance, suggesting the most efficient instance types and flagging underutilized resources for potential downsizing or removal. It also recommends ways to enhance performance.

Personally, I rely heavily on Cost Explorer to review spending, analyze suggestions, and forecast ways to further streamline infrastructure costs.

I also like to check the Total Forecasted Cost for the current month to catch any unusual surges early on.

Cost Optimization Tips for AWS

I’m skipping the standard advice you can find online—like “monitor, analyze, optimize, automate, tag.” Instead, I think practical, real-world tips add more value:

Occasionally, I use a cost dashboard to visualize spending across resources and pinpoint high-cost areas, like:

• Top 10 S3 buckets over the last two months

• Specific Data Transfer charges

• What instance families we paid for three months ago

Thinking about cost optimization right from the start of infrastructure design can save you a ton of time down the road.

Surprising Cost Insights

• CloudWatch: Costs can pile up if you have audit, access logs, and loads of metrics enabled. Monitor CloudWatch carefully!
• VPC Private Links: If you’re backing up ElasticSearch data to S3 within the same region, creating Private Links can save a lot on data transfer fees.
• Database Instances on Non-Prod: Using large database instances on non-production environments can be overkill if they’re not under heavy load.
• Support Plans: Need support for a specific issue? Change your support plan only when you need it to avoid paying for it long-term.
• Lifecycle Rules: Set up Lifecycle Rules for S3, ECR, Snapshots, etc., to control resource counts and stop paying for resources that are long out of use. Why keep ECR images from 2021? ??

But if you’re thinking about Glacier Flexible Retrieval for an S3 bucket storing access, audit, or cloudtrail logs, consider this: you may be charged a hefty amount when it’s time to delete that bucket.

Instance Types and Spot Pricing

Analyze different instance types. Sometimes, you can get more memory for the same cost or even cheaper.

Also, check Spot prices across Availability Zones—you might find better rates.

If you’d like to go deeper into Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, or Savings Plans , you can find more here ????

App Resource Limits in Kubernetes

Requests and Limits in Kubernetes can sometimes be set excessively, leading to more worker nodes than needed.

Keep an eye on metrics to optimize and potentially reduce the number of nodes.

Scheduled Resource Scaling

Auto-scale down test and non-prod resources during off-hours.

For example, use Cron jobs to reduce Kubernetes worker nodes, stop RDS instances, and other resources, then scale them back during business hours.

This approach can lead to significant savings.

Team Collaboration for Cost-Efficient Architecture

Work closely with developers at every development stage to optimize architecture.

Serverless solutions like AWS Lambda or using S3 for static services are often far more affordable and effective than EC2 or containers, especially for tasks that don’t need constant computing resources.

Finally, a Real-World Optimization Example

To wrap up, here’s a real example of cost optimization from one of our clients.

I’m particularly proud of this project because it brought a lot of positive changes. We made significant improvements, so here’s how it looked:

Before Optimization:

After Optimization:

Conclusion

AWS cost optimization is an ongoing process that requires continuous attention and a strategic approach, whether using Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, or Spot Instances .

The goal is to strike the right balance between cost savings and keeping your infrastructure stable and efficient.

Every project is unique, so the approach to cost optimization may differ. By using these tips and strategies, you can significantly reduce costs and improve AWS resource efficiency.

Post Disclaimer: These recommendations are based on my experience and are not universal solutions. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Thank you