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Example — Cloud Waste Calculator

Cloud Waste Audit: Finding Idle and Oversized Resources in a $25K AWS Bill

Example of identifying cloud waste in a $25,000 monthly AWS bill — idle instances, oversized resources, unattached EBS volumes. Free, browser-only tool.

Worked example

Input

Monthly AWS bill: $25,000 Suspect: dev/staging environments, old snapshots, unattached volumes

Output

Waste audit findings: Category 1 — Idle resources: 3 dev EC2 instances running 24/7 (usage: 8h/day) Waste: 16h/day × 3 × $0.192/hr = $276/month Fix: schedule stop/start (Lambda + EventBridge) Category 2 — Oversized instances: 4 EC2 t3.xlarge at 15% avg CPU Right-size to t3.medium: save $288/month Category 3 — Unattached EBS volumes: 12 volumes (1.2 TB total, from terminated instances) Cost: 1,200 GB × $0.10 = $120/month Fix: delete or snapshot + delete Category 4 — Old snapshots: 847 snapshots, 400 older than 90 days (3 TB) Cost: 3,000 GB × $0.05 = $150/month Fix: lifecycle policy retaining only 30 days Total identified waste: $834/month (3.3% of bill) Annual savings: $10,008

Cloud waste typically runs 25-35% of bills for organizations without active FinOps practices. The quick wins are unattached EBS volumes (zero value, instant delete) and idle dev instances (scheduling saves 50-67% of cost). Rightsizing requires 2-week CPU/memory observation before acting — don't rightsize based on a single day's metrics. AWS Cost Explorer's rightsizing recommendations automate this analysis.

What to do next Enable AWS Trusted Advisor (Business plan) or AWS Compute Optimizer (free). Run Cost Explorer rightsizing report. Set a monthly waste review meeting with the team owning each cost center.

Use the Cloud Waste Calculator to run this on your own input.

Open Cloud Waste Calculator →

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of cloud bills is typically wasted?

Industry estimates range from 25-35% for organizations without active FinOps. Gartner reports approximately 70% of cloud buyers overspend their budget. The largest categories are: idle resources (12%), over-provisioned resources (15%), and unused storage/snapshots (8%).

How do I prevent cloud waste from accumulating in the future?

Three controls: (1) tag all resources with owner and environment — untagged resources get auto-stopped after 7 days, (2) set AWS Budgets alerts at 80% of forecast to catch surprises early, (3) enforce instance scheduling for dev/staging environments via Lambda or AWS Instance Scheduler.