Cloud bills have a habit of growing faster than your revenue. We've seen startups spend ₹5 lakh/month on AWS when ₹2 lakh would give them the same performance. Here's how to fix it.

1. Right-Size Your Instances

Most teams over-provision out of fear. Use AWS Compute Optimizer or CloudWatch metrics to identify instances running at under 20% CPU. Downsize them — you'll often save 30% immediately.

2. Use Spot and Reserved Instances

On-demand instances are expensive for predictable workloads. Reserved Instances save up to 72% for steady-state servers. Spot Instances save up to 90% for batch processing and non-critical workloads.

3. Implement Auto-Scaling Properly

Don't keep servers running 24/7 for peak traffic that happens 4 hours a day. Proper auto-scaling groups scale down during off-hours — saving you money while maintaining availability.

4. Optimize Data Transfer Costs

Data egress is often overlooked. Use CloudFront CDN for static assets, keep traffic within the same AWS region, and use VPC endpoints instead of NAT gateways where possible.

5. Clean Up Unused Resources

Unattached EBS volumes, idle load balancers, forgotten snapshots — these add up. Run a monthly cleanup audit. AWS Trusted Advisor flags these automatically.