In today’s cloud-first world, managing costs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is more critical than ever. While many organizations are familiar with basic cost-saving strategies, AWS offers several underutilized tools and services that can unlock massive savings—if you know where to look.
Let’s dive into 10 Hidden Tools that can help you optimize your cloud spending without compromising performance or scalability.
🧭 AWS Cost Optimization Framework
1. 💰 AWS Savings Plans: Flexible Long-Term Discounts
What it is:
AWS Savings Plans offer significant discounts (up to 72%) compared to On-Demand pricing in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) over 1 or 3 years.
Why it’s a Saves:
Unlike Reserved Instances, Savings Plans are more flexible—they apply across instance families, sizes, OS types, and even regions (depending on the plan type).
Use it when:
- You have predictable workloads.
- You want flexibility across services like EC2, Fargate, and Lambda.
2. 📊 AWS Cost Explorer: Visualize and Forecast Spending
What it is:
AWS Cost Explorer is a built-in tool that helps you analyze, visualize, and forecast your AWS spending.
Why it’s a Saves:
It provides customizable reports and forecasting tools that help you understand where your money is going and how to optimize it.
Use it when:
- You need to identify cost trends.
- You want to forecast future expenses based on historical usage.
3. 🛠️ AWS Trusted Advisor: Real-Time Optimization Insights
What it is:
AWS Trusted Advisor scans your AWS environment and provides real-time recommendations across five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits.
Why it’s a Saves:
It helps you identify idle resources, unused instances, and over-provisioned services—all of which can be shut down or resized to save money.
Use it when:
- You want to automate cost audits.
- You need to ensure best practices are followed.
4. ⚡ EC2 Spot Instances: Massive Compute Savings
What it is:
Spot Instances let you use unused EC2 capacity at discounts of up to 90% compared to On-Demand pricing.
Why it’s a Saves:
Perfect for fault-tolerant, flexible workloads like big data, CI/CD, and batch processing.
Use it when:
- Your workloads can handle interruptions.
- You want to scale compute-heavy tasks affordably.
5. 🧠 AWS Lambda: Serverless, Pay-Per-Use Computing
What it is:
AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning servers. You only pay for the compute time your code actually uses.
Why it’s a Saves:
It eliminates idle server costs and is ideal for event-driven architectures.
Use it when:
- You’re building microservices or APIs.
- You want to process data in real-time.
6. 📦 S3 Intelligent-Tiering: Smart Storage Optimization
What it is:
Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves your data between frequent and infrequent access tiers based on usage patterns.
Why it’s a Saves:
It reduces storage costs without requiring manual intervention or performance trade-offs.
Use it when:
- You have unpredictable access patterns.
- You want to avoid overpaying for infrequently accessed data.
7. 📉 AWS Budgets: Proactive Cost Control
What it is:
AWS Budgets lets you set custom cost and usage thresholds and receive alerts when you approach or exceed them.
Why it’s a Saves:
It helps you stay ahead of budget overruns and make timely adjustments.
Use it when:
- You manage multiple teams or projects.
- You want to enforce cost accountability.
8. 💾 EBS Volume Types: gp3 vs gp2
What It Is:
gp3 volumes offer better performance and flexibility at 20% lower cost than gp2.
Why It Saves:
You can provision IOPS and throughput independently of storage size, avoiding overpayment.
💡 Pro Tip: Use the AWS CLI to migrate from gp2 to gp3 with zero downtime.
9. 🧾 AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
What It Is:
A machine learning service that monitors your spending and alerts you to unusual spikes.
Why It Saves:
Early detection of cost anomalies helps prevent runaway bills due to misconfigurations or unexpected usage.
💡 Pro Tip: Set up anomaly monitors by linked account, service, or linked usage type.
10. 🧮 AWS Compute Savings Estimator
What It Is:
An interactive tool that estimates potential savings from moving workloads to Graviton-based instances or Savings Plans.
Why It Saves:
Helps you model cost scenarios before committing to architectural changes.
💡 Pro Tip: Use this tool during architecture reviews or before launching new services.
11. ⏱️ AWS Instance Scheduler
What It Is:
Automatically start and stop EC2 and RDS instances based on a defined schedule.
Why It Saves:
Avoid paying for idle resources during off-hours. Can cut costs by up to 50% in non-production environments.
💡 Pro Tip: Use CloudFormation templates and resource tags to manage schedules at scale.
12. 🧠 AWS Compute Optimizer
What It Is:
A machine learning-powered tool that analyzes your EC2, Lambda, and Auto Scaling usage to recommend better configurations.
Why It Saves:
Rightsizing can reduce costs by 30–50% by eliminating over-provisioned resources.
💡 Pro Tip: Integrate with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate instance resizing.
🧭 Visual Guide: AWS Cost Optimization Map
Here’s a visual summary of how these tools fit into your AWS cost management strategy:
✅Conclusion
These seven AWS features are often overlooked but can lead to substantial cost savings when used strategically. Whether you’re a startup trying to stretch your budget or an enterprise managing complex workloads, these tools can help you optimize your cloud spend and boost operational efficiency.
🔍 Next Step: Start by enabling Cost Explorer and Trusted Advisor, then evaluate your workloads for Savings Plans and Spot Instances opportunities.