AWS bill review for startups: what to check first
A seed-stage AWS bill usually hides the same few things: idle non-production resources, oversized instances, unattached storage and unused commitments. Here is the order to check them.
- Group by service. Open the Cost and Usage Report or Cost Explorer and sort by service. Two or three lines usually make up most of the bill.
- Look for dev, test and staging. Non-production resources that run around the clock are the first candidates to schedule or delete.
- Check compute sizing. Instances sized for a launch and never revisited are common. Compare each with its real CPU and memory use before resizing.
- Find orphaned storage. Unattached volumes, old snapshots and forgotten load balancers still bill.
- Ask about commitments. Steady on-demand compute may suit a Savings Plan, but only commit to what you will keep running.
Try it on your own bill
CloudCostAI reads a billing export (AWS Cost and Usage Report, GCP billing export or Azure usage CSV) and returns findings with fix steps. It needs no access to your cloud account. Run the free report (one a month), or buy the one-time audit for $179: every detector, the migration estimate and a written review (current plans). Pro is $19/month, Team $99/month.
Findings are estimates from billing lines, not utilisation metrics. Check each one against real usage before changing anything.