AWS Cost Optimization That Tells You What to Cut, in Dollars
Connect your AWS billing read-only and Costanalyst finds the idle boxes, the oversized instances, and the forgotten resources, then hands you a prioritized savings plan in real dollars.
projected this month if unattended
Spend by team
Budget forecast
In short
AWS cost optimization is the practice of reducing your AWS bill by removing waste and rightsizing resources. Costanalyst connects to your AWS Cost and Usage Report with read-only access, learns where your spend goes, and surfaces savings opportunities as dollar figures, like 3,420 dollars per month of idle RDS instances, prioritized by impact. It never makes a change in your account. You review each recommendation against the underlying line items and decide what to act on.
What you get
AWS cost optimization, built for finance and platform teams
Idle and orphaned resources
Idle RDS instances, unattached EBS volumes, unused Elastic IPs, and forgotten NAT gateways surface with the exact monthly dollars they cost.
Rightsizing recommendations
Oversized EC2 and RDS instances are flagged with a target size and the savings, computed from real p95 utilization, not a guess.
Commitment coverage
See where Savings Plans and Reserved Instances would cut on-demand spend, and where existing commitments are going unused.
Verify before you act
Every recommendation shows the underlying usage and billing line items, so finance and engineering both trust the number before anyone touches the console.
How it works
From connected to saving in four steps
Connect AWS read-only
Grant a read-only Cost Explorer and Cost and Usage Report role. We never get write access to your account.
Analyze the bill
Costanalyst maps spend by service, account, and tag, and learns your normal usage patterns.
Get dollar recommendations
Savings opportunities surface as prioritized cards with real monthly figures and the line items behind them.
You decide and act
Your team reviews each recommendation and makes the change in AWS. Costanalyst recommends, you act.
Questions people ask
AWS cost optimization, answered
What is AWS cost optimization?
AWS cost optimization is the ongoing practice of reducing your AWS bill by removing waste and matching resources to real demand. The main levers are rightsizing oversized instances, cleaning up idle and orphaned resources, and covering steady usage with Savings Plans or Reserved Instances. Costanalyst reads your Cost and Usage Report and turns each opportunity into a dollar figure so you cut the biggest waste first.
How can I reduce my AWS bill?
Start by rightsizing overprovisioned EC2 and RDS instances, then delete idle resources like unattached EBS volumes, unused Elastic IPs, and forgotten NAT gateways. After usage is stable, cover the baseline with Compute Savings Plans. Most teams cut 20 to 30 percent without changing their architecture. Costanalyst surfaces each of these as a prioritized card with the exact monthly savings and the line items behind it.
How does AWS rightsizing work?
AWS rightsizing matches instance capacity to actual workload demand instead of an oversized default. It analyzes utilization, usually p95 CPU and memory, then recommends a smaller instance type or termination for underused resources. Costanalyst computes rightsizing targets from your real usage and shows the savings in dollars, so finance and engineering both trust the number before anyone changes the console.
What is the difference between Savings Plans and Reserved Instances?
Both trade a one or three year commitment for a lower rate than on-demand. Reserved Instances lock you to a specific instance family and region, while Compute Savings Plans apply the discount across instance families, sizes, and regions, so they preserve flexibility. For most teams Compute Savings Plans are the better default. Rightsize first, because committing before you validate demand just discounts capacity you do not need.
How much can AWS cost optimization save?
Most organizations reduce AWS spend 20 to 30 percent without re-architecting, using rightsizing, waste cleanup, and commitment coverage. Combining rightsizing, Savings Plans, and Spot Instances can cut compute spend 40 percent or more. The savings depend on how much idle and oversized capacity you are running today, which is exactly what Costanalyst quantifies in dollars before you act.
What are the best AWS cost optimization tools?
AWS native tools include Cost Explorer, the rightsizing recommendations report, and AWS Compute Optimizer, all free but limited to AWS. Third-party platforms such as Costanalyst, CloudZero, and Vantage add cross-account analysis, dollar-ranked recommendations, and anomaly alerts. Costanalyst connects read-only, never touches your account, and shows the usage and billing line items behind every recommendation.
Comparing your options
See your savings in dollars
Connect your spend read-only and get a prioritized savings plan. Money never moves. No card to start.