Guides

AWS cost, explained properly.

The patterns that drive AWS bills up, written so you can act on them without hiring anyone. No listicles, no vendor pitch — just the specifics of where the money goes.

DiagnosticsAugust 23, 20268 min read

Is my AWS bill too high?

There's no benchmark that answers this honestly. Five checks that take twenty minutes will — and they tell you far more than comparing yourself to a company you don't run.

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DatabasesAugust 23, 20268 min read

Do AWS Savings Plans cover RDS?

No — and it's the most expensive misunderstanding in AWS commitment pricing. RDS needs its own Reserved Instances. Here's how to check whether your databases are still on full on-demand rates.

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StorageAugust 23, 20268 min read

EBS volume types explained: gp2, gp3, io1, io2, st1, sc1

Six types, and most teams only ever need one. What each is actually for, when the others are worth it, and the three things that drive an EBS bill more than the type ever does.

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DiagnosticsAugust 14, 202610 min read

Why did my AWS bill suddenly go up?

A diagnostic, not a listicle. Diff the two months by usage type, read the shape of the increase, and work through the seven causes in the order they're usually the answer.

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FundamentalsAugust 12, 202612 min read

The AWS cost optimization checklist

The 24 checks worth running on any AWS account, ordered by how fast they pay back — starting with the ones that take an afternoon and need no planning.

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ComputeAugust 12, 202611 min read

Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances: which one, and when

Savings Plans don't cover your databases — that one fact explains most of the confusion. Here's which instrument to buy, how to size it, and why you should buy it last.

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DatabasesAugust 12, 202612 min read

Why is my RDS bill so high?

Multi-AZ doubles the instance cost, allocated storage can't shrink, and manual snapshots live forever. Most RDS waste is configuration, not data — so you can fix it without touching the database.

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StorageAugust 12, 20269 min read

gp2 vs gp3: which SSD to use, and what it costs you

gp3 is cheaper per gigabyte than gp2, includes 3,000 IOPS regardless of volume size, and the migration is online with no downtime. Plus the two cases where you should check the baseline first.

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NetworkingAugust 12, 20269 min read

Why is my NAT Gateway bill so high?

NAT Gateway charges twice — hourly per gateway and again per gigabyte processed — and most of the gigabytes are traffic that never needed to go through it.

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