cost optimization
798 articles on cost optimization — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
S3 storage class comparison: when each tier wins
Six S3 storage classes spanning 99x in per-GB price. Here's when Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Glacier Instant Retrieval, Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and Deep Archive each make sense, with lifecycle policy patterns.
AWS data transfer costs explained
The most opaque part of the AWS bill, broken down. Internet egress, cross-region, cross-AZ, NAT processing, CloudFront, VPC endpoints. The five biggest cost surprises and how to fix them.
Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans: which to buy
Compute Savings Plans, EC2 Instance Savings Plans, Standard and Convertible Reserved Instances. The actual discount math, what each one covers, and a decision framework for which commitment to buy.
AWS Spot instances: when do they actually save money?
Spot instances offer 50-90% discounts but can be reclaimed with 2 minutes notice. Here's when they're worth it, how to handle interruptions gracefully, and how to combine Spot with Savings Plans for the lowest total cost.
AWS NAT Gateway costs: 3 alternatives that actually save money
NAT Gateway is the second-most-expensive AWS resource for many production workloads. Here's how to cut its cost by 60-90% using free VPC Gateway Endpoints, paid Interface Endpoints, and NAT instances.
When gp2 to gp3 actually saves money (and when it doesn't)
gp3 is 20% cheaper than gp2 with better baseline performance. The migration is in-place with no downtime. Here's exactly when it saves money, when it doesn't, and how to migrate safely at scale.