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# 6 tip to reduce your AWS bill

Are idle instances secretly inflating your cloud costs? Discover six actionable engineering strategies to eliminate AWS money leaks and cut your compute bills by up to 90%.

- **Speakers:** Sébastien Stormacq
- **Event:** World Congress 2021
- **Published:** June 29, 2021
- **Duration:** 45:12
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/159-6-tip-to-reduce-your-aws-bill

## Summary

Transitioning from fixed-cost hardware to on-demand cloud infrastructure introduces agility but risks unpredictable billing if resources are left unchecked. This narrative provides six highly actionable strategies to fundamentally optimize an AWS footprint, treating cloud resource management like the simple rule: "when you leave a room, you turn off the light." By actively identifying idle or underutilized resources—such as unattached EBS volumes, orphan Elastic IPs, and obsolete snapshots—teams can prevent silent money leaks that easily amount to thousands of dollars a month.

Key technical implementations involve automating the shutdown of non-production environments using the AWS Instance Scheduler, which can yield up to 35% savings for development and testing instances. For stateless and fault-tolerant workloads, migrating to EC2 Spot Instances reduces compute costs by up to 90%, especially effective for containerized applications. Storage expenses can be optimized seamlessly via S3 Intelligent-Tiering, which analyzes access patterns and automatically shifts infrequently accessed objects to cheaper storage tiers, unlocking up to 30% savings with zero application refactoring.

For predictable, baseline capacity needs, Compute Savings Plans provide a flexible commitment model that discounts up to 55% across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda, largely superseding the rigidity of legacy Reserved Instances (though RIs remain standard for RDS and Redshift). Finally, routinely auditing infrastructure via AWS Trusted Advisor establishes an automated cost-optimization feedback loop, ensuring ongoing alignment between provisioned capacity and actual business requirements.

**Keywords:** aws cost optimization, s3 intelligent-tiering storage, ec2 spot instances, compute savings plans, aws instance scheduler, cloud billing management, stateless container workloads, ebs storage cleanup, aws trusted advisor checks, rds reserved instances, idle cloud resources, cost explorer budgeting, on-demand cloud pricing, ip address cost management, automated resource tracking, cloud waste reduction

## Chapters

1. **Understanding the nature of on-demand cloud billing** (01:00) — The shift from fixed hardware costs to usage-based billing requires proactive usage management.
1. **Automating storage savings with S3 intelligent tiering** (06:11) — Lifecycle rules and access patterns dictate when data moves to cheaper storage classes to lower monthly costs.
1. **Scheduling automatic shutdowns for development and testing environments** (09:55) — Automatically stopping non-production database functionality and servers outside of working hours mitigates unused compute expenses.
1. **Leveraging EC2 spot instances for stateless workloads** (13:31) — Unused compute capacity offers substantial discounts for containerized and transient tasks capable of handling interruptions.
1. **Applying compute savings plans for baseline capacity pricing** (19:31) — Committing to a predictable compute expenditure threshold yields significant hourly discounts across a flexible range of resource types.
1. **Utilizing reserved instances for specialized database workloads** (26:31) — Purchasing upfront capacity terms offsets standard operating margins for sustained relational and clustered database configurations.
1. **Identifying and deleting orphaned AWS foundational resources** (30:19) — Locating detached storage volumes and static IP addresses via advisor tooling terminates completely unproductive residual infrastructure expenses.
1. **Configuring core billing dashboards and customized financial alerts** (38:02) — Setting predefined spending thresholds provides protective warnings against unintended experimentation costs running passively.
1. **Clarifying storage retrieval costs and automated shutdown risks** (40:24) — Automatic termination configurations introduce operational dangers that warrant careful consideration over basic notification solutions.

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- [Applying the Frugal Architect mental model](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1408-mastering-aws-cost-optimization-real-world-technical-and-operational-cost-saving-best-practices) (from "Mastering AWS Cost Optimization: Real-world technical and operational cost-saving best practices")
- [Identifying and removing unused resources in Azure](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1530-leave-it-to-the-dutch-how-to-save-on-your-azure-bill) (from "Leave it to the Dutch: How to save on your Azure bill!")
- [Optimizing cloud spend and resources through automated finops](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/853-navigating-the-ai-wave-in-devops) (from "Navigating the AI Wave in DevOps")
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