These days, nearly every business relies on AWS or Google Cloud to power its operations. But here’s the problem: the cloud bills keep climbing higher each month, sometimes with no clear explanation. The convenience of spinning up resources with a few clicks comes with a hidden tradeoff of financial sprawl that creeps up until it becomes a budgetary crisis.

Why This Happens:

• Not understanding the Complex pricing, the true cost of multi-region deployments, or data transfer fees

• The “Set It and Forget It” is a Trap. There are Servers left running even after projects end; in fact, they keep running for a long time.

• Invisible consumption, such as storage volumes, snapshots, and load balancers, accumulates like digital dust.

• Over-engineering, for instance, developers provisioning a “just in case” capacity that is never used.
  
  There are proven ways to keep costs under control. This blog shows different ways to control the same.

Getting Started with Cloud Cost Savings

Before cutting down your cloud expenses, you need to understand what you’re actually paying for. Both AWS Management and GCP Support have complex pricing that changes based on:

• Which services are you using, every cloud service has unique pricing models. Using the wrong service for a workload can cost 5-10X more unnecessarily.
• Where your servers are located,
  Cloud regions have drastic price differences. Data transfer between regions/zones triggers hidden fees.
• How much data are you moving around

-First steps:

• For AWS: Dive into CloudWatch to spot where your money’s going
• For GCP support, it is always better to check billing reports to identify your most significant expenses

Finding and Fixing Waste

It’s frustrating to know that a huge amount of money gets wasted on:

• Test servers, no one remembered to shut down
• Storage volumes for projects that ended months ago
• Overpowered virtual machines that are mostly idle

Make it a habit to:

1. Run monthly checks for unused resources
2. Set up alerts for unusual spending spikes
3. Delete what you don’t need ( this will help you save)

Discounts That Actually Work

Both cloud providers offer ways to save if you have a proper plan ahead:

Google Cloud Discounts

• SUDs: Save up to 30% when you use certain services heavily
• CUDs: Commit to 1-3 years of usage for discounts up to 55%

AWS Savings
AWS Reserved Instances use discounts to offer massive savings for predictable workloads, but they require strategic purchasing to avoid overcommitment.

• Reserved Instances: You can pay upfront to save up to 75% compared to on-demand pricing
• Options include:
  • Full upfront payment (most significant savings)
  • Partial upfront
  • No upfront payment

Smart Scheduling = Big Savings

Not every workload needs to run 24/7. For non-critical jobs:

• AWS: Use Auto Scaling Groups with start/stop schedules
• GCP: Set up Instance Groups with a Cloud Scheduler

Automate this so you don’t have to remember to turn things off and save up.

Choosing the Right Tools

Some workloads don’t need premium resources:

• GCP’s preemptible VMs cost much less but can be interrupted
• Perfect for batch jobs or testing environments
• Just don’t use them for anything time-sensitive

Keeping Costs Under Control

Make cost monitoring part of your routine:

• AWS: Check Cost Explorer weekly
• GCP: Review billing reports monthly
• Set budget alerts before you get surprised by a huge bill

Conclusion

Cloud services are powerful but expensive if you’re not careful. The key is to understand and regularly check for unused resources, take advantage of external expert cloud service support, and automate where possible. The cloud’s value isn’t in its infinite scale. With the right approach, you can have both performance and cost efficiency.

By staying on top of these areas, you can keep getting all the benefits of AWS Management and GCP without breaking the bank. Every dollar saved on cloud costs goes straight to your bottom line.