CostPatrol Blog
Guides, analysis, and strategies for AWS cost optimization
How to Reduce Your AWS Cost: 15 Checks That Actually Save Money
Reduce your AWS cost with 15 actionable checks. Exact AWS CLI commands, real dollar savings, and step-by-step fixes for EC2, RDS, EBS, S3, Lambda, NAT Gateway, and CloudWatch. No fluff.
AWS Cost Optimization for Terraform Users: Catch Waste Before It Deploys
How to prevent AWS cost waste at the infrastructure-as-code layer. Covers Terraform cost estimation, policy enforcement, right-sizing in HCL, and integrating cost checks into your CI/CD pipeline.
AWS Reserved Instances vs Savings Plans vs Spot: A Practical Pricing Guide
Compare AWS Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot Instances side by side. Learn when to use each, how to combine them, and how to build a cost-optimized compute strategy.
DynamoDB On-Demand vs Provisioned: Which Pricing Mode Saves More?
A practical comparison of DynamoDB on-demand vs provisioned capacity pricing. Includes break-even calculations, real cost examples, and CLI commands to analyze your tables.
How to Find Unused AWS Resources Costing You Money
A comprehensive guide to finding and cleaning up idle EC2 instances, orphaned EBS volumes, unused Elastic IPs, old snapshots, and other AWS resources wasting your budget.
How to Read Your AWS Bill: A Practical Guide to Understanding AWS Costs
AWS billing is confusing by design. This guide breaks down your AWS bill into plain language, explains the hidden charges, and shows you how to use Cost Explorer to find what is actually costing you money.
How to Reduce AWS CloudWatch Logs Costs: Ingestion, Storage, and Alternatives
CloudWatch Logs can silently become one of your largest AWS bills. Learn how to cut ingestion costs, set retention policies, filter noise, and use cheaper alternatives for log storage.
How to Reduce AWS EBS Costs: Volumes, Snapshots, and Storage Types
Cut your AWS EBS bill by migrating gp2 to gp3, cleaning up orphaned volumes and snapshots, and right-sizing storage. Includes CLI commands for each optimization.
AWS NAT Gateway Costs Explained: Why Your Bill Is So High and How to Fix It
NAT Gateway is one of the most expensive and overlooked AWS services. Learn how to identify excessive NAT Gateway costs and reduce them with VPC endpoints, architecture changes, and monitoring.
How to Reduce AWS RDS Costs: Right-Sizing, Reserved Instances, and Storage Optimization
Cut your AWS RDS bill by right-sizing instances, using Reserved Instances, optimizing storage, and identifying idle databases. Includes CLI commands and real pricing examples.
S3 Storage Class Optimization: Choose the Right Tier and Stop Overpaying
A practical guide to S3 storage classes. Compare pricing for Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier, and Deep Archive. Includes lifecycle policy examples and CLI commands to analyze your buckets.
AWS Cost Optimization Checklist: 50 Items Every Team Should Check
A comprehensive AWS cost optimization checklist with 50 actionable items across EC2, RDS, Lambda, EBS, S3, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, and NAT Gateway. Each with a CLI command.
AWS Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances (2026): Which Should You Choose?
A practical guide to AWS Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances. When to use each, key differences, common mistakes, and how to automate the analysis.
CloudZero Pricing (2026): What Does CloudZero Actually Cost?
CloudZero hides pricing behind a demo form. Here's what we found: expected costs, contract structure, what's included, and how it compares to alternatives starting at $99/mo.
How to Reduce AWS Lambda Costs: A Practical Guide
Cut your AWS Lambda bill by finding idle functions, rightsizing memory, reducing log waste, and fixing timeout misconfigurations. Includes CLI commands for each optimization.
Vantage Pricing (2026): What Does Vantage Actually Cost?
Vantage has a free tier but enterprise pricing requires a call. Here's what we found about Vantage costs, what's included at each tier, and how it compares to CostPatrol.