Reduce Your AWS Bill by 60%: Real Techniques That Actually Work

The 6 Changes That Actually Move the Needle

Most cost guides list 50 things. These 6 account for 80%+ of savings.

1. Right-Size EC2 Instances

## 2. Savings Plans (30-60% Discount)
Commit to a spend amount for 1 year, no instance changes required. AWS Cost Management > Savings Plans > Compute Savings Plans. A t3.medium: $456/year on-demand vs $280/year on Savings Plan.
## 3. S3 Lifecycle Rules

4. Delete Orphaned EBS Volumes

## 5. Spot Instances for Non-Critical Workloads
70-90% cheaper than on-demand. Perfect for: CI/CD agents, batch jobs, dev environments. Not for: production databases or web servers.
## 6. Budget Alert (Do This Today)
AWS Console > Billing > Budgets > Create Budget. Also enable Cost Anomaly Detection — it catches unusual spend before you see it on the bill.
| Action | Typical Saving |
|---|---|
| Right-sizing EC2 | 20-40% of EC2 |
| Savings Plans | 30-60% of compute |
| S3 Lifecycle Rules | 40-80% of S3 |
| Spot for batch jobs | 70-90% of those workloads |