The essential AWS cloud cost audit checklist: Optimize your spending in 2024

Are you drowning in AWS bills that seem to grow each month? You’re not alone. Most organizations overspend on cloud services by 20-30% due to inefficient resource management. A structured cloud cost audit can help you reclaim that budget—without compromising performance.

Why cloud cost audits matter for AWS users

Cloud cost audits are systematic reviews of your AWS spending designed to identify inefficiencies and align expenses with business goals. Without regular audits, businesses risk:

Over-provisioning resources that sit idle
Underutilizing expensive storage solutions
Missing opportunities for significant discounts
Losing visibility into which teams are driving costs

The good news? A well-executed audit can reduce your AWS spending by up to 40% through automation and optimization—all while maintaining or even improving performance.

Your comprehensive AWS cloud cost audit checklist

1. Initial assessment and visibility

Review AWS Cost Explorer reports to identify high-cost services and spending trends
Generate detailed AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CURs) for granular analysis
Map cloud resources to business units, projects, and environments
Establish cost baselines for each department or workload
Document your current architecture and resource allocation

Pro tip: Start with a 90-day lookback period to identify patterns and anomalies in your spending. This timeframe aligns with what professional auditors use to uncover meaningful trends without getting lost in historical data.

2. Resource optimization

Identify and terminate zombie resources (unused EC2 instances, detached EBS volumes)
Right-size EC2 instances based on actual utilization metrics
Implement auto-scaling with appropriate buffer limits
Review AWS Elastic Block Store cost optimization opportunities for significant storage savings
Evaluate reserved instance coverage and opportunities
Analyze spot instance potential for non-critical workloads

“Most companies can reduce their EC2 costs by 30-40% through proper instance sizing and commitment strategies,” according to cloud optimization experts. For example, a typical e-commerce company might discover several oversized production instances running at just 15% CPU utilization—perfect candidates for downsizing without performance impact.

3. Storage management

Audit S3 bucket lifecycle policies to move infrequently accessed data to cheaper tiers
Identify and remove unused or redundant EBS volumes
Migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes for better performance at lower costs
Review snapshot retention policies and remove unnecessary backups
Implement S3 Intelligent-Tiering for automatic cost optimization

Storage often represents a silent budget killer. Many organizations maintain thousands of snapshots far beyond their useful life, or store cold data on hot storage tiers. One enterprise client discovered 40TB of untouched log files on standard S3 storage—moving this to Glacier Deep Archive reduced those specific storage costs by 95%.

4. Monitoring and reporting

Set up AWS Budgets with threshold-based alerts
Create custom dashboards for tracking spending by service, team, and project
Implement anomaly detection to catch unexpected spending spikes
Schedule regular cost review meetings with stakeholders
Establish KPIs for cloud cost efficiency

Proactive monitoring transforms cost management from reactive fire-fighting to strategic planning. When a major retailer implemented anomaly detection, they caught a misconfigured Lambda function that was generating $600/day in unnecessary costs within hours, not weeks.

5. Cost allocation and tagging

Enforce consistent tagging policies (e.g., CostCenter, Project, Environment)
Implement tag-based access controls and budget enforcement
Create tag-based reports for accurate cost allocation
Develop chargeback or showback mechanisms for internal teams
Review untagged resources regularly and assign appropriate tags

Pro tip: Consider using AWS FinOps tools to automate tagging compliance and reporting. Without proper tagging, organizations struggle to determine which departments or projects are driving cloud costs, making accountability impossible.

6. Advanced cost reduction strategies

Evaluate Savings Plans vs. Reserved Instances for your workload patterns
Compare AWS pricing with other providers like GCP’s discount models for multi-cloud leverage
Consolidate AWS accounts for volume discounts
Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) with cost guardrails
Review networking costs, including data transfer and NAT gateway expenses
Optimize containerized workloads with Kubernetes cost management

Commitment-based discounts like Savings Plans can reduce on-demand costs by up to 75% for predictable workloads. Meanwhile, data transfer costs often lurk as hidden expenses—one software company discovered they were paying more for cross-region data transfers than for the compute resources themselves.

7. Governance and automation

Develop cloud cost management policies and procedures
Implement automated cost optimization routines
Create approval workflows for resource provisioning
Establish a FinOps practice or cloud center of excellence
Document cost optimization best practices for your organization
Train development teams on cost-aware architecture design

Automation is the key to sustainable cost optimization. Manual efforts inevitably fade as teams focus on other priorities, but automated governance ensures cost efficiency becomes embedded in your operational DNA. Consider tools that can automatically resize over-provisioned resources or terminate resources outside business hours when they’re not needed.

Putting your audit into action

Conducting an audit is just the beginning. The real value comes from implementing the findings and establishing ongoing optimization practices:

Prioritize actions by impact: Focus first on changes that deliver the highest savings with minimal effort. The classic “low-hanging fruit” approach might involve removing unused resources before tackling complex architecture changes.
Automate where possible: Manual optimization is unsustainable. Implement tools that can automatically identify and remediate cost issues. For instance, scheduled scripts that identify and notify owners of idle resources can drive accountability.
Build a cost-conscious culture: Share cost visibility with engineering teams and recognize cost-saving initiatives. Some organizations gamify this process, creating leaderboards for teams that achieve the best cost optimization.
Implement continuous monitoring: Cloud costs are dynamic—set up systems to catch inefficiencies as they arise. This might include daily reports of resources missing critical cost allocation tags.
Review regularly: Schedule quarterly audits to ensure ongoing optimization as your workloads evolve. Cloud environments change rapidly, and yesterday’s optimization might be today’s limitation.

How Hykell can streamline your AWS cost optimization

While this checklist provides a solid foundation, implementing these optimizations requires significant time and expertise. Hykell offers automated AWS cost optimization that can reduce your cloud spending by up to 40%—without requiring ongoing engineering effort.

Our approach includes:

Detailed cost audits that identify underutilized resources
Automated EBS and EC2 optimization
Kubernetes cost management
Real-time monitoring and alerts
Performance-preserving optimization strategies

Best of all, we only take a percentage of what you save—if you don’t save, you don’t pay. This aligns our incentives perfectly with your cost-saving goals.

Start optimizing today

Cloud cost management is not a one-time project but an ongoing discipline. By following this checklist and implementing a structured approach to AWS cost optimization, you can significantly reduce your cloud spending while maintaining the performance and reliability your business depends on.

Ready to stop overpaying for AWS? Begin with a comprehensive audit using this checklist, or let Hykell’s automation handle the heavy lifting for you.