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Reduce your AWS bill as a startup: a checklist for teams with no FinOps person

You do not need a cost-management project. You need one afternoon with Cost Explorer and a list of the lines that are usually wasted on small accounts. These are ordered by how little effort the check takes, each with a price and a page that explains the fix. Commitments such as Savings Plans come last, once the waste is gone and usage is stable.

US East (N. Virginia) list prices checked 2026-11-04.

See a sample result

The checks, in order

  1. Unattached and unused things

    Elastic IP $3.65/month each; ALB about $16.43/month each; NAT gateway $32.85/month each. List Elastic IPs not associated, load balancers with zero requests for 14 days, NAT gateways nothing routes to, volumes in state Available.

    Decoder: PublicIPv4:InUseAddress and IdleAddress: the public IP address charge

  2. gp2 volumes

    $0.10 vs $0.08 per GB-month: 20% lower on the same size. EC2 > Volumes filtered to gp2; check IOPS use, then modify to gp3 live on a test volume first.

    Decoder: EBS:VolumeUsage.gp2 - the gp2 volume line, and the cheaper gp3

  3. Idle load balancers

    $0.0225 per hour each. RequestCount per load balancer; consolidate services behind one ALB with host rules where it fits.

    Decoder: LoadBalancerUsage and LCUUsage: what an ALB costs

  4. NAT traffic to S3

    $0.045 per GB; gateway endpoint has no additional charge. Check NatGateway-Bytes then flow logs top destinations; add an S3 gateway endpoint to private route tables.

    Decoder: NatGateway-Bytes: the NAT Gateway data-processing line

  5. Log volume and retention

    $0.50 per GB ingested, $0.03 per GB-month stored. Largest log groups by IncomingBytes; retention policy on every group.

    Decoder: CloudWatch Logs DataProcessing-Bytes: the log ingestion line

  6. S3 lifecycle

    Standard $0.023 vs Standard-IA $0.0125 per GB-month. Largest buckets by Storage Lens; lifecycle rules for non-current versions and incomplete uploads; transition only data you rarely read.

    Decoder: TimedStorage-ByteHrs: the S3 Standard storage line

  7. Dev and staging copies

    Every environment repeats the fixed charges above. Count NAT gateways, load balancers and public IPs per environment; check whether non-production can use one gateway or be scheduled off outside working hours.

    Decoder: NatGateway-Hours: the fixed monthly cost of each NAT gateway

Checklist

  1. Block one hour. Open Cost Explorer, last full month, Group by Usage type.
  2. Write the top 10 lines and their dollars in a spreadsheet; this is your baseline.
  3. Work through the seven checks above in order, proving each cause with a metric before changing it.
  4. Change one thing at a time; keep a note of the date and the expected saving.
  5. After 3 days compare the daily line to your note.
  6. Set a Budgets alert at a level that would have caught the last surprise.
  7. Only then look at Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, with stable usage and your own numbers.

Run the checklist on your own bill

Upload a Cost Explorer or CUR CSV. Billtrim reads it in your browser and gives you this list ranked for your account, with the dollars and the steps.

See a sample result

Paste your export: how to export a Cost Explorer CSV or CUR file in two minutes.

Questions people ask

Should I buy a Savings Plan first?

Usually later: a commitment locks in the current spend, so remove waste first, then size the commitment to what remains.

How long do these checks take?

A first pass through Cost Explorer and the console lists is typically an afternoon; the fixes themselves vary.

Do I need a cost tool?

Cost Explorer is free and covers all of the checks above. A tool helps when you want the ranking and the steps done for you, or ongoing alerts.

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