Cloud Cost Audit
Find the waste in your AWS or Google Cloud bill
A full audit for a flat $5,000. We read the bill line by line, estimate monthly savings per fix, and help you make the changes.
What We Review
The bill, then the resources behind it
Cost Explorer and Cloud Billing show totals. The savings are in the line items.
The bill
A line-by-line read of Cost Explorer or Cloud Billing. Every service, every region, every recurring charge.
Databases
Managed databases that run when nobody is using them. License-included pricing that hides idle copies in one line.
Servers
EC2 or Compute Engine instances, including Windows, that stay up all weekend for a weekday job.
Storage
Object stores that keep old versions of deleted files in the expensive class. Lifecycle rules that were never written.
Backups and snapshots
Volumes, snapshots, and AMIs that have been accumulating for years, including copies in a second region.
Commitments and discounts
Reserved instances, Savings Plans, and committed use discounts that were never bought for workloads that never stop.
How It Works
Read the bill. Rank the fixes. Make the changes.
Access the bill
Read access to Cost Explorer or Cloud Billing, and to the resources those lines point at.
Review line by line
Match each charge to a real database, server, bucket, or snapshot. Separate production from everything else.
Prioritize the savings
A written plan. Each fix has an estimated monthly saving. Highest return and lowest risk go first.
Help implement
Schedules, reservations, lifecycle rules, and the rest of the plan. We stay on for the changes, not only the report.
The Offer
One audit. $5,000.
A flat fee for a full cloud cost audit on AWS or Google Cloud. This is the only price we publish.
$5,000 for the full audit
Book a call. We will confirm the cloud, the access we need, and when we can start.
Client Work
We identified savings and cut a cloud bill by 45%
Most of the spend was sitting in plain sight. Dev databases ran all night. Deleted files still lived in S3 Standard. Nobody had read the bill line by line. Read the case study.
The situation
A midsize life sciences lab running a LIMS on AWS. About $5,000 a month in scope. The largest lines were managed Oracle databases, S3, EBS volumes and snapshots, and Windows servers.
What we changed
We scheduled non-production databases and servers for the workday, reserved the production database, and moved old S3 versions to Glacier Deep Archive. The lab's team is cleaning up years of snapshots.
The outcome
The in-scope bill dropped by 45%. The client is not named. The write-up names no people, products, or locations.
What We Usually Find
The same waste, in most accounts
These are the patterns. The case study walks through each one.
Dev and test run 24/7
Copies used during the workday stay up all weekend. A schedule is usually enough.
No reservation on production
Steady databases and servers still pay on-demand. A one-year commitment cuts a large slice.
Deleted files still billed
Versioned buckets keep old versions in Standard until a lifecycle rule moves them.
Snapshots that never expire
Hundreds of snapshots, some years old, including copies in a second region.
Stopped databases come back
A stopped RDS instance restarts on its own after 7 days. A schedule is more reliable than a one-time stop.
License cost in one line
License-included database pricing hides idle copies inside a single hourly charge.
AWS and Google Cloud
The same audit on both clouds
We do not ask you to switch clouds. We read the bill you already have and change the resources that are wasting money.
AWS
Cost Explorer, RDS and Oracle, EC2 and EBS, S3 lifecycle rules, EventBridge Scheduler, reserved instances and Savings Plans.
Google Cloud
Cloud Billing, Cloud SQL, Compute Engine instance schedules, committed use discounts, Cloud Storage classes (Coldline, Archive) and lifecycle rules, persistent disk snapshots.
FAQ
Common questions
What is included in the $5,000 audit?
A line-by-line review of the bill (Cost Explorer or Cloud Billing), plus the resources behind it: databases, servers, storage, backups and snapshots, and commitments or discounts. You get a prioritized savings plan with estimated monthly savings per fix, and help putting the changes in.
Is $5,000 the whole fee?
Yes. The audit is a flat $5,000. That is the only price we publish. Implementation help for the fixes in the plan is part of that fee.
Do you work on AWS and Google Cloud?
Yes. We audit both. The waste is usually the same: idle non-production resources, missing commitments on steady production, old object versions in expensive storage classes, and snapshots that never expire. The product names differ. The work does not.
What access do you need?
Read access to the bill and the account is enough to start: Cost Explorer or Cloud Billing, plus the ability to inspect the resources on the bill. We work in your account. We do not take over billing.
Will you make the changes, or only write a report?
Both. The deliverable is a prioritized plan with estimated monthly savings per fix. We also help implement those changes: schedules, reservations or committed use discounts, lifecycle rules, and the rest of what the plan calls for.
Can't Cost Explorer or Cloud Billing do this already?
Those tools show totals and some recommendations. They do not tell you that a test database is only used during the workday, or that most of an S3 bill is old versions of files someone deleted years ago. That takes a line-by-line read of the bill against how the systems are actually used.
How do you estimate savings?
Each fix gets an estimated monthly saving based on the current line item and the change. A database scheduled for weekdays instead of 24/7 is a simple hours calculation. A one-year reservation is the published discount on that instance. We keep the figures rounded and tied to the bill, not to a generic benchmark.
Will you name us or publish our bill?
No. If we write about the work, the client is anonymized. No company name, no product names that identify them, no people, no locations.
Ready to audit the bill?
A full Cloud Cost Audit is $5,000. Book a 30-minute call to confirm fit and access.
Ready to start?
Book a Consultation