How AWS pricing actually works.
Research, guides, and honest comparisons from the team that finds AWS waste for a living.
Reading the AWS Bill: A Field Guide to Rates and Credits
How the AWS bill is actually assembled: the CUR, the four rate types, how RI and Savings Plan discounts flow, and why your reports never quite agree.
Why Your Cost Optimization Recommendations Are Gathering Dust
Most teams know where they're wasting money on AWS. The problem isn't finding waste. It's acting on what you found. Here's how guided walkthroughs change that.
Your AWS Dashboard Has All the Answers (Except the One That Matters)
AWS gives you more cloud data than ever, but data without guidance leaves teams stuck. Here's why opinionated recommendations beat dashboards every time.
How to Cut NAT Gateway Costs on AWS
NAT gateways charge for every gigabyte they process on top of their hourly rate. Five steps to find what yours really cost and route the traffic cheaper.
How to Set Up S3 Lifecycle Policies That Cut Storage Costs
S3 lifecycle policies move data to cheaper storage classes automatically. How to write rules that save money without tripping retrieval and early delete fees.
Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans: Which Should You Buy?
Savings Plans replaced Reserved Instances for most compute, but not all of it. Where each discount still wins, and the traps in switching between them.
gp2 vs gp3: The EBS Discount Most Accounts Never Claim
gp3 volumes cost 20 percent less per gigabyte than gp2 and buy performance separately. Here is the pricing math, plus the rare cases worth a second look.
What Is a Reserved Instance? AWS Reservations, Explained
A Reserved Instance is a billing discount, not a physical server: commit to an instance family for one or three years and pay up to 72 percent less.
What Is a Savings Plan? AWS Commitment Pricing, Explained
A Savings Plan is an AWS pricing agreement: commit to a fixed hourly compute spend for one or three years and pay up to 72 percent less than on-demand.
Browse by topic
Storage
S3, EBS, and archival storage. The classes, lifecycle rules, and hidden retrieval costs that decide the bill.
2 articlesBilling fundamentals
How the AWS bill is built. The CUR, rate types, cost allocation tags, and reading an invoice.
1 articleCommitments
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. Coverage, utilization, and sizing commitments to real usage.
3 articlesData transfer
The egress and inter-zone charges that hide in the bill. NAT, CloudFront, and VPC endpoint economics.
1 articleFinOps practice
The discipline of cloud cost. Budgets, forecasting, showback, and turning findings into action.
2 articles