If you only do one thing with your AWS bill this quarter, make it the right thing in the right order. This field guide hands you the exact sequence, so you never lock in waste with a commitment or chase the wrong line item first.
What is inside
- The 30 percent waste problem: where idle, oversized and zombie spend hides on AWS
- The order of operations: rightsize and schedule before you commit
- EC2 rightsizing with Compute Optimizer, step by step
- The Graviton migration decision and where it pays off
- Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances: a decision table
- Coverage and utilization targets, and how to ladder purchases
- Storage tiering, data transfer and the egress trap
- Budgets, anomaly detection and guardrails that hold the savings
- Negotiating an Enterprise Discount Program from the buyer's side
- The 40-point AWS cost optimization checklist
Who it is for
Engineering leaders, platform teams and FinOps practitioners who own an AWS bill and want a single reference that is specific, current as of 2026, and free of vendor spin. It pairs with our complete guide to AWS cost optimization and the highest-impact reads in the cluster: Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances and EC2 rightsizing with Compute Optimizer.
The guide shows you the method. Our AWS cost optimization service runs it for you, on a fixed fee or a no savings, no fee basis.