AWS Cost Optimization Audit
Where the money is going, what can be cut without touching reliability, and what it is worth.
From $249 2–3 days
AWS Bill Shock Investigation
One question answered fast: why did the bill jump, and will it happen again next month.
Price and scope
From $149
Typically $149–$299, fixed in writing before anything starts.
What moves it up
- No cost allocation tags, so the increase cannot be attributed to a team or a workload
- More than one account, where the spike may not be in the one you are looking at
- A jump spread across several services rather than concentrated in one line
Some of this you can check yourself, right now, for free: AWS Cost Estimator →
What actually goes wrong
A bill doubles and the console is unhelpful in a particular way: it groups by service, so the answer comes back as "EC2 and data transfer", which is where the money always is. The actual cause is a single event — a snapshot schedule that stopped deleting, a log group with no retention that has been growing since February, a NAT gateway suddenly carrying a backup that used to run inside the VPC, or a test left running by somebody who has since left. It is one thing, it started on one day, and the grouping most people reach for is the one that hides it.
How I find it
Cost Explorer at daily granularity, grouped by usage type — the step change has a dateaws ce get-cost-and-usage with the previous month as the comparison, not the previous yearCloudTrail around that date, for what was created or changed the day the line movedaws logs describe-log-groups --query 'logGroups[?retentionInDays==null]', sorted by stored bytes
What you get
- The date the increase started, and the specific resource or change behind it
- Whether it is one-off, recurring, or still growing — which is the question that actually matters
- What to do about it now, and what it would cost to leave alone
- A short note on whether tagging would have made this answerable without me
Questions
How is this different from the cost optimization audit?
Scope and urgency. This answers one question — what changed — and it is usually one day of work. The audit goes looking for savings across the whole account whether or not anything has changed. If your bill is steady but too high, you want the audit; if it jumped last month, you want this.
What if the increase turns out to be legitimate growth?
Then you get that answer with the numbers behind it, which is worth knowing — it is the difference between a problem and a business doing well. I will say so plainly rather than manufacturing a finding to justify the fee.
Can AWS refund a mistake like this?
Sometimes, for a genuine accident, and it is worth asking. AWS Support has discretion on one-off billing adjustments and they are more receptive when you can show exactly what happened and what you changed — which is one of the reasons this produces a written cause rather than a hunch.
How quickly can you start?
Usually the next working day, and it is one day of work once I have read-only billing and CloudTrail access. It is deliberately small and fast, because a bill that is still climbing while you wait for a quote is the wrong shape of engagement.
If this is not quite it
AWS Logging & Audit Foundation
A record of who did what, kept long enough to be useful and somewhere it cannot be edited.
From $299 2–4 days
Want this done?
Tell me what you are running and I will come back with a fixed price and a date. If it turns out you do not need this, I will say that instead.
Prefer to talk? Book a free call ↗ · Or hire me on Upwork ↗ · Typical reply within one business day.
Before you enquire
When I answer
Sunday to Thursday, 09:00–18:00 EET. Outside that I will still look, but I will not promise a time.
No 24/7 desk, and I will not pretend otherwise
One person, one time zone. If round-the-clock cover is what you need, you need a team, and I will say so rather than sell you a plan that cannot deliver it.
Your AWS bill stays yours
You pay Amazon directly and you keep control of the account. Nothing here resells your infrastructure or sits between you and your own billing.
A price that starts with "from" is a starting price
Every service page lists exactly what pushes a quote above it, before you ask. You get a fixed number in writing before any work begins.