cost optimization
798 articles on cost optimization — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
Redshift RA3 vs DC2 cost: separating compute from storage
Redshift DC2 nodes bundle compute and fixed local storage, while RA3 nodes separate them and bill managed storage per GB. For growing datasets RA3 is usually cheaper; for small, compute-heavy clusters DC2 can still win. Here is the pricing and the crossover point.
Redshift concurrency scaling cost: the free credits and what runs over
Redshift concurrency scaling adds transient clusters to absorb query spikes, and it comes with a daily free credit that covers many workloads for nothing. Here is how the free tier works, what overflow costs, and how to keep concurrency scaling from becoming an uncapped bill.
Athena partitioning cost savings: pay for less scanned data
Athena charges $5 per terabyte scanned, so the whole cost game is scanning less. Partitioning, columnar formats, and compression can cut the data a query reads by 10 to 100 times. Here is how each lever works and how they stack to slash an Athena bill.
AWS Glue crawler cost: the minimum charges that add up
Glue crawlers keep your Data Catalog in sync with S3, but they bill per DPU-hour with a 10-minute minimum and a 2-DPU floor, so frequent crawls of many tables cost more than teams expect. Here is the pricing and how to crawl less to spend less.
EFS Infrequent Access cost: cutting file storage by 90 percent
EFS Standard costs $0.30 per GB-month, one of the priciest storage options on AWS, but its Infrequent Access tier drops to $0.016 per GB, a near-95-percent cut. Here is how EFS lifecycle management moves cold files automatically and where the access fees bite.
NAT Gateway vs NAT instance cost: when a self-managed box wins
A NAT Gateway costs about $0.045 per hour plus $0.045 per GB processed, while a NAT instance is just an EC2 box with no per-GB processing fee. For low traffic the instance can be far cheaper, but it trades money for operational risk. Here is the math.
VPC gateway vs interface endpoint cost: free vs per-hour PrivateLink
Gateway VPC endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB are completely free, while interface endpoints cost about $0.01 per hour per AZ plus $0.01 per GB. Knowing which services use which endpoint type, and how the fees stack across AZs, keeps PrivateLink affordable. Here is the breakdown.
CloudFront price classes cost: paying less by serving fewer regions
CloudFront price classes let you exclude the most expensive edge locations, trading global reach for a lower per-GB rate. Price Class 100 serves only North America and Europe at the cheapest rates. Here is how the classes change your bill.
Cross-AZ vs cross-region data transfer cost: the two hidden network taxes
Traffic between availability zones costs about $0.01 per GB each way, while traffic between regions runs roughly $0.02 per GB or more. Both are easy to trigger accidentally and both compound at scale. Here is how the two taxes differ and how to avoid them.
ALB LCU cost explained: how load balancer capacity units bill you
An Application Load Balancer costs about $0.0225 per hour plus a per-LCU fee, and the LCU is the part that surprises people. It measures four dimensions and bills the highest one. Here is how LCUs work and how to keep them low.
NLB cost explained: Network Load Balancer pricing and NLCUs
A Network Load Balancer costs about $0.0225 per hour plus a per-NLCU fee, and like the ALB it bills on the highest of several dimensions. For TCP and UDP pass-through it is often cheaper than an ALB. Here is how NLB pricing works.
Route 53 health checks cost: the small fees behind DNS failover
Route 53 health checks cost $0.50 per month for AWS endpoints and $0.75 for external ones, with optional features adding $1 to $2 each. On their own they are cheap, but dozens of them with add-ons quietly add up. Here is the pricing.
CloudWatch Logs ingestion vs storage cost: where the money really goes
CloudWatch Logs charges about $0.50 per GB to ingest and only $0.03 per GB per month to store, so ingestion, not retention, is almost always the bigger bill. Understanding the split changes how you cut logging cost. Here is the breakdown.
CloudWatch dashboards cost: the $3 fee nobody budgets for
CloudWatch dashboards cost $3 per dashboard per month after the first three free, and API calls to render them add more. Teams that auto-generate a dashboard per service can rack up an unexpected line. Here is how dashboard pricing works.
KMS key cost vs request cost: which one dominates your bill
AWS KMS charges $1 per month per customer-managed key and $0.03 per 10,000 requests, so a few keys is trivial but a high-throughput app making millions of encrypt and decrypt calls can flip the bill to requests. Here is how to tell which side dominates.
Transit Gateway inter-region peering cost: connecting regions the expensive way
Transit Gateway inter-region peering lets you link regions through the AWS backbone, but you pay per-GB data processing on each side plus cross-region data transfer. For high-volume inter-region traffic the fees stack. Here is the cost breakdown.
Direct Connect data transfer savings: when the dedicated line pays off
Direct Connect adds port fees but slashes data transfer out to about $0.02 per GB versus $0.09 over the internet. For heavy, steady egress to your data center the savings can dwarf the port cost. Here is the break-even math.
Global Accelerator vs CloudFront cost: two edge services, two bills
Global Accelerator charges a fixed $0.025 per hour plus a per-GB premium, while CloudFront has no fixed fee and bills per GB and per request. They solve different problems, and picking the wrong one wastes money. Here is the cost comparison.
VPC Flow Logs cost: the free feature with a delivery bill
VPC Flow Logs are free to enable, but you pay to deliver them: about $0.50 per GB to CloudWatch Logs or less to S3. On a busy VPC that ingestion cost can surprise you. Here is how flow log pricing actually works.
CloudTrail data events cost: why S3 and Lambda logging gets expensive
CloudTrail management events are largely free, but data events cost $0.10 per 100,000 events, and high-volume S3 or Lambda logging can generate billions of them. Here is how data event pricing works and how to keep it in check.
Public IPv4 address cost: the charge AWS added to every address
AWS now charges about $0.005 per hour for every public IPv4 address, in use or idle, adding roughly $3.65 per month per address. For fleets with hundreds of public IPs the total is real. Here is how the charge works and how to cut it.
SSM Parameter Store cost explained: free standard vs paid advanced
SSM Parameter Store standard parameters are free, while advanced parameters cost $0.05 each per month and higher-throughput API calls carry a fee. Knowing when you actually need advanced tier saves money over Secrets Manager. Here is the pricing.
Private IP vs public IP data transfer cost: the free path you might be missing
Traffic between resources over private IPs in the same AZ is free, but the same traffic over public or Elastic IPs is charged even within a region. Using the wrong address turns free traffic into a per-GB bill. Here is how to keep it free.
Azure VM right-sizing guide: cutting compute waste by family
Most Azure VM bills carry oversized instances that never touch their allocated CPU or memory. Right-sizing to the correct family and size, then layering reservations, is the highest-return Azure cost move. Here is how to do it.