aws
356 articles on aws — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
DynamoDB cost optimization: capacity mode, GSIs, TTL, and table class
DynamoDB cost is throughput + storage + GSIs + extras. Here's how to cut it: match capacity mode to traffic, prune unused indexes, set TTL, and use Standard-IA for cold tables.
AWS vs Azure vs GCP cost: why no cloud is universally cheapest
Comparable compute and storage sit in a narrow band across the three clouds. The real differences are egress, the discounts you'll commit to, and managed services. Here's how to compare apples-to-apples.
EFS vs EBS vs S3 cost: pick by access pattern, not the per-GB rate
S3 (~$0.023/GB) is cheapest, EBS (~$0.08) middle, EFS (~$0.30) priciest, but they're not interchangeable. Here's how to match the service to the access pattern and avoid paying 13x by using EFS where S3 would do.
CloudTrail cost optimization: data events are the explosion
Management events' first copy is free; data events ($0.10/100k) on busy S3/Lambda can hit thousands per month. Here's the cost layers and how to scope data events so CloudTrail stays cheap.
AWS EKS full cost breakdown: the control plane is the small line
EKS cost is control plane ($73/mo) + worker nodes (the bulk) + EBS + load balancers + NAT + cross-AZ transfer. Here's the full breakdown and where the real savings are, almost all in the nodes.
SageMaker cost optimization: kill the idle inference endpoint
The classic SageMaker overspend is a real-time endpoint running 24/7 for a model called rarely. Here's how to cut it with Serverless Inference, multi-model endpoints, Managed Spot Training, and auto-stopping notebooks.
MSK vs Kinesis cost: the broker floor that decides it
Kinesis scales down to a single shard with no real floor; MSK runs brokers 24/7 ($400+/month for a 3-broker cluster). Here's the crossover by throughput and the Kafka-ecosystem angle.
Redshift vs Athena cost: provisioned cluster or pay-per-scan?
Athena bills $5/TB scanned and costs nothing idle; Redshift bills for a provisioned cluster (~$793/month per node) or per RPU. Here's the crossover by query volume and how table design cuts both.
SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge cost: pick by pattern, not price
SQS is $0.40/M, SNS $0.50/M, EventBridge $1.00/M, but they do different jobs. Here's the cost ranking, when EventBridge's premium is worth it, and how to keep messaging cheap at scale.
Transit Gateway cost explained: attachments, data, and vs VPC peering
Transit Gateway is $0.05/hour per attachment (~$36.50/month each) + $0.02/GB. Here's why it costs more than peering, when the hub is worth it (~4-6 VPCs), and how to cut it.
AWS Backup cost explained: retention is the whole bill
AWS Backup bills mostly for backup storage (GB-month) plus restore and cross-region copy. The bill grows from retention creep. Here's how the meters work and how to keep backups from piling up forever.
Step Functions cost: Standard vs Express and the 100x difference
Standard workflows bill $0.025 per 1,000 state transitions; Express bills per request + duration. For high-volume workflows the gap is 50-100x. Here's which to use and why high-frequency Standard workflows blow up.
Secrets Manager vs Parameter Store cost: stop paying $0.40 for static secrets
Secrets Manager is $0.40/secret/month + API calls; Parameter Store standard tier is free. Here's what the fee actually buys (rotation, cross-account) and the split that cuts a large secrets bill 90%.
Aurora Serverless v2 cost: what an ACU really costs you
Aurora Serverless v2 bills per ACU-hour (~$0.12) scaling in 0.5-ACU steps, with a ~$44/month floor unless you enable scale-to-zero. Here's when it beats provisioned Aurora and when it doesn't.
OpenSearch cost optimization: shrink the always-on cluster
OpenSearch bills data-node hours + EBS + master nodes 24/7, so a small cluster is $700+/month. Here's how to cut it with UltraWarm tiering, Graviton nodes, gp3, lifecycle management, and Reserved Instances.
AWS Graviton migration: where the ~20% savings actually come from
Graviton (ARM) instances list ~20% cheaper than x86 with up to 40% better price-performance, across EC2, Lambda, RDS, and more. Here's the discount, where it applies, and how small the migration usually is.
AWS WAF cost explained: the three meters that drive your bill
AWS WAF charges $5/month per Web ACL + $1/month per rule + $0.60 per million requests, plus paid add-ons like Bot Control. Here's how the meters stack and how to keep them down.
Fargate vs EC2 cost: the crossover is utilization, not the rate
Fargate costs 15-50% more per vCPU and GB than EC2, but you pay for zero idle capacity. Here's where the crossover actually is, why dense fleets favor EC2, and when Fargate's premium is the cheapest line on the bill.
ALB vs NLB cost: why they're nearly identical and what actually drives the bill
ALB and NLB both cost ~$16.43/month to exist plus LCU/NLCU usage at ~$0.006-0.008 per unit-hour. The price difference is small, the real lever is the LCU dimension your traffic stresses and how many balancers you run.
ElastiCache vs MemoryDB cost: when durability is worth paying for
MemoryDB costs more than ElastiCache for the same node type and adds a per-GB data-written charge ElastiCache doesn't have. Here's the price difference, the durability you're buying, and when each is the right call.
RDS Proxy cost: is the always-on charge worth it?
RDS Proxy bills per vCPU of the database it fronts, continuously, whether or not connections flow. Here's how the charge works, when it pays for itself, and when it's overhead you can skip.
MWAA cost: why managed Airflow starts at $350/month
Amazon MWAA bills a continuous base environment fee with no scale-to-zero, so even an idle environment costs ~$350/month. Here's the cost breakdown, why the floor exists, and how to keep it down.
Aurora I/O Optimized: when it actually pays off
Aurora I/O Optimized eliminates per-I/O charges but adds ~30% to instance/storage rates. The break-even is around 25% I/O share of total cost. Here's the math, when to switch, and how to apply it in Terraform.
AWS cost allocation tags: the practical guide
The standard 5 tags every resource should have, the activation gotcha that hides historical data, enforcement via Terraform default_tags and Tag Policies, and the anti-patterns to avoid.