AWS Bill Shock Investigation
One question answered fast: why did the bill jump, and will it happen again next month.
From $149 1 day
AWS Cost Optimization Audit
Where the money is going, what can be cut without touching reliability, and what it is worth.
Price and scope
From $249
Typically $249–$599, fixed in writing before anything starts.
What moves it up
- A bill above roughly $3,000 a month, where the tail of small line items gets long
- More than one account, so the same waste has to be found several times over
- No cost allocation tags, which means the first job is working out whose spend is whose
Some of this you can check yourself, right now, for free: AWS Cost Estimator →
What actually goes wrong
The bill goes up gradually and nobody can point at when. What the console shows is a list of services in descending order, which tells you EC2 is expensive — a fact you already had. The savings are almost never in the headline: they are in a NAT gateway processing terabytes that a VPC endpoint would carry free, in gp2 volumes nobody migrated to gp3, in snapshots of instances deleted two years ago, and in a development environment that has run every night and weekend since the day it was created.
How I find it
Cost Explorer grouped by usage type rather than by service, which is where the real lines appearaws ec2 describe-volumes --filters Name=status,Values=available — disks attached to nothingaws ec2 describe-snapshots --owner-ids self, against instances that still existCloudWatch NatGatewayBytes against the S3 and DynamoDB traffic a VPC endpoint would carry free
What you get
- A ranked list of savings with the monthly figure and the risk beside each one
- The difference between waste and capacity stated plainly, so nothing is cut that you needed
- Commitment advice — Savings Plans or Reserved Instances — only AFTER the rightsizing is known
- The tagging gap named, so next month's bill can be attributed without another audit
- A rerun-it-yourself section, because most of this becomes a monthly habit rather than a project
Questions
How much will this actually save me?
On an unreviewed account, commonly twenty to forty per cent — but I will not put a number on yours before looking, and anyone who does is guessing. If the account turns out to be tight already, you get a short report saying so and I will tell you not to buy the follow-up work.
Can you take a share of the savings instead of a fee?
Yes, and for a bill of any size it is usually the better deal for both of us — a smaller fixed fee plus a percentage of the first year's verified savings. It also aligns the incentive properly: I only do well if the number actually moves.
Will cutting costs make things less reliable?
Not if the two are separated, which is the point of the ranked list. Deleting an unattached volume carries no risk at all; removing a second availability zone carries plenty. Every recommendation says which it is, and the risky ones are yours to decline.
Should I just buy Savings Plans?
Not first. A one-year commitment on an oversized fleet locks in the waste and pays for it up front, which is the most expensive possible order. Rightsize, run for a few weeks, then commit to what is left.
If this is not quite it
AWS Auto Scaling & Rightsizing
Capacity that follows demand, and instances sized for the load you have rather than the one you feared.
From $399 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.