Cloud bills can spiral out of control. Here are practical ways to reduce costs without sacrificing performance.
Quick Wins
Right-Size Instances
Most instances are over-provisioned. Analyse usage and downsize where possible. Typical savings: 20-40%.
Reserved Instances
Commit to 1-3 year terms for predictable workloads. Savings: 30-60% vs on-demand.
Spot/Preemptible Instances
Use for fault-tolerant workloads like batch processing. Savings: up to 90%.
Delete Unused Resources
Orphaned volumes, old snapshots, unused elastic IPs. They add up.
Architectural Changes
- Serverless: Pay only when code runs
- Auto-scaling: Scale down during quiet periods
- Storage tiers: Move cold data to cheaper storage
- CDN: Reduce origin requests
Monitoring & Governance
- Set up billing alerts
- Tag resources by team/project
- Regular cost reviews
- Use native cost tools (AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management)
Common Mistakes
- Running dev/test environments 24/7
- Not using spot instances where possible
- Over-provisioned databases
- Ignoring data transfer costs
Need help optimising cloud costs? Contact PYCO IT.