7 FinOps practices to reduce costs on AWS without sacrificing performance
Reducing cloud cost does not have to mean cutting resources and risking application performance. The most effective FinOps practices attack waste, not the real capacity the business needs. These are seven concrete actions any company can start applying to bring the AWS bill under control.
1. Tag everything Without consistent tags identifying which team, project, or cost center owns each resource, it is impossible to know where the money is going. Defining a tagging standard and applying it across the entire AWS account is the first step for any FinOps initiative to work.
2. Eliminate idle resources Instances running outside business hours in development and test environments, storage volumes not attached to any resource, and old snapshots that no one uses anymore are classic examples of cost that accumulates without generating any value. A simple process of recurring identification and cleanup usually already generates significant savings.
3. Right-size instances to the real load Many companies provision instances larger than they need, whether out of caution or because they never reviewed the sizing after the initial launch. Comparing the real usage of CPU, memory, and network with the size of the contracted instance reveals opportunities for immediate reduction, without impact on performance.
4. Use reserved instances and Savings Plans for predictable workloads For workloads that run constantly, contracting discounted capacity through reserved instances or Savings Plans reduces cost compared to on-demand pricing, without requiring any change in the architecture.
5. Take advantage of spot instances for interruption-tolerant loads Batch processing, automated testing, and workloads that support interruption can run on spot instances, with a significant discount compared to the standard price. It is one of the most effective ways to reduce costs on workloads that do not require continuous availability.
6. Automate the shutdown of non-production environments Development, test, and staging environments rarely need to be active twenty-four hours a day. Automating the shutdown outside usage hours, with automatic restart when necessary, is a simple practice that reduces costs without requiring any commercial renegotiation.
7. Track cost as a team metric, not just a finance one When each engineering team sees the cost generated by its own architecture decisions, alongside performance and availability metrics, behavior changes naturally. Cost stops being a problem that appears once a month and becomes part of the development routine.
The result of these combined practices
None of these actions alone solves the problem completely, but applied together and continuously, they usually reduce the AWS bill consistently, without compromising the performance or availability of the application.
CloudDog implements FinOps routines for companies that use AWS, identifying real savings opportunities and putting these practices into continuous operation. Learn about our FinOps service and find out how much your company can save without giving up performance.
