5 AWS Cost Optimization Strategies Most Teams Overlook
Quick summary: Beyond Reserved Instances — practical strategies to reduce your AWS bill by 20-40% without sacrificing performance or reliability.
Key Takeaways
- Beyond Reserved Instances — practical strategies to reduce your AWS bill by 20-40% without sacrificing performance or reliability
- Beyond Reserved Instances — practical strategies to reduce your AWS bill by 20-40% without sacrificing performance or reliability
Table of Contents
Most teams know about Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. But in our experience helping businesses optimize their AWS spend, the biggest savings often come from strategies that are less obvious.
Here are five approaches we consistently find deliver 20-40% cost reductions.
1. Right-Size Before You Reserve
Committing to Reserved Instances on oversized resources locks in waste for 1-3 years. Before purchasing any reservations, analyze actual CPU and memory utilization using AWS Compute Optimizer. We regularly find instances running at 10-15% utilization that can be downsized by 50% or more.
2. Implement Storage Lifecycle Policies
S3 costs add up quickly when data sits in Standard tier indefinitely. Set up lifecycle rules to transition objects to S3 Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier Instant Retrieval, or Glacier Deep Archive based on access patterns. For most organizations, 60-70% of stored data has not been accessed in the past 90 days.
3. Optimize Data Transfer Routes
Data transfer charges between AWS regions, availability zones, and to the internet are often the third-largest line item on an AWS bill — and the most overlooked. Use VPC endpoints for AWS service communication, consolidate workloads in fewer AZs where HA requirements allow, and leverage CloudFront for egress optimization.
4. Schedule Non-Production Resources
Development, staging, and QA environments rarely need to run 24/7. Implement AWS Instance Scheduler or simple Lambda functions to stop non-production resources outside business hours. This alone can cut non-production compute costs by 65%.
5. Enable Cost Anomaly Detection
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection uses machine learning to identify unusual spending patterns and alert you before a misconfigured resource or runaway process results in a surprise bill. It is free to enable and takes minutes to set up.
Start With Visibility
The foundation of any cost optimization effort is visibility. If you are not sure where your money is going, start with a free AWS cost assessment from our team. We will identify the top savings opportunities specific to your environment.
