The AWS bill can multiply quickly if you're not careful. "Why did this month's bill triple?" is the question that gave rise to the FinOps discipline. In this article we'll cover ways to bring AWS costs under control.
01. Visibility with Cost Explorer
First step: monitor AWS Cost Explorer regularly. Which service, which region, which account consumes how much — it's all clear here. There's also a monthly cost trend and forecast.
02. Budget Alerts
A monthly budget is defined for each account. Alerts arrive as you approach 50%, 80% and 100% of the budget. A chance to intervene early, before the surprise happens.
03. Reserved Instances (RI)
If you have continuously running EC2 servers, a 1- or 3-year RI gives a 30-75% discount. Payment upfront, monthly or in three installments. An unused RI is wasted money; do the math carefully.
04. Savings Plans
More flexible than RIs. You get a discount with a "I'll consume $X per month" commitment. Region and service don't matter. 20-65% savings possible.
05. S3 Storage Classes
In S3, different classes depending on how often a file is accessed:
- Standard: frequent access
- Standard-IA: infrequent access
- Glacier: archive
- Deep Archive: long-term archive
The right class choice yields 70-90% savings.
06. Unused Resources
The biggest trap: forgotten resources. Unattached Elastic IPs, unused EBS volumes, empty S3 buckets, stopped EC2 instances. Trusted Advisor detects these automatically and makes recommendations.