Cloud bills keep climbing, and IT teams are stuck playing defense.
You try to cut costs, but providers make it confusing. You hear the same old advice: “Turn off unused instances.” Great—except that barely scratches the surface.
Maybe you think, We already have a cloud provider. We don’t have time for another optimization project. Will this even save money?
Yes, it will. And no, this isn’t another “best practices” list filled with vague suggestions.
In this blog, you’ll learn real, lesser-known hacks that actually cut costs. Just practical steps you can take today. Each one targets a common but often ignored source of waste.
If you’re tired of guessing which changes will actually save money, keep reading. These are the tweaks that cloud providers won’t remind you about—because they make money when you don’t use your cloud wisely.
1. Stop Paying for Storage You Don’t Actually Use
Find and Delete Abandoned Snapshots
Snapshots are meant to be temporary. You create them for backups, testing, or migrations. But over time, they pile up—even when they’re no longer needed.
Since snapshots don’t automatically delete themselves they keep occupying expensive storage. If you’re not regularly reviewing them, you’re paying for backups of instances that don’t even exist anymore.
A common issue? Forgotten snapshots of decommissioned instances. When you delete an instance, its snapshots don’t go away. Instead, they just sit in storage, silently adding costs to your bill every month.
Here’s what to do:
- Run an audit on your storage usage. Look for snapshots linked to instances that no longer exist.
- Check the last accessed date. If a snapshot hasn’t been used in months, it’s probably safe to delete.
- Set a review process. Make it a habit to check snapshots every quarter, so old ones don’t linger.
Even a few extra terabytes of snapshot storage can cost hundreds of dollars a year. Cleaning them up is an easy win.
2. Right-Size Instances the Smart Way (Not Just Guessing)
Guessing your instance size is a guaranteed way to waste money. Most teams overprovision because they fear downtime or underprovision and struggle with performance issues.
Right-sizing means looking at real usage data. CPU, memory, and disk usage reveal whether an instance is too big or too small. If CPU utilization is consistently under 20%, you’re overpaying. If it’s maxed out, you’re risking slow performance.
Performance analysis tools provide clear insights:
- Identify underutilized instances that can be downsized or consolidated.
- Detect overworked instances that need more resources before they become a bottleneck.
- Analyze trends to predict future demand instead of reacting when something breaks.
Right-sizing isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about balancing efficiency with performance.
3. Cut Hidden Networking Costs Before They Drain You
Networking costs often fly under the radar. Every time data moves across regions, between cloud providers, or even out to the public internet, it adds to your bill. Many teams overlook this until they see unexpected charges.
One of the easiest ways to reduce these costs is keeping related resources in the same region to avoid cross-region transfer fees. If your architecture requires cross-region communication, consider private networking solutions like VPC peering instead of routing traffic over the internet.
Another common mistake? Serving static content directly from computer instances instead of using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Offloading this traffic to a CDN reduces outbound data transfer costs and improves performance.
4. Automate Scaling Without Over-Provisioning
Auto-scaling is supposed to keep cloud costs efficient. But if it’s misconfigured, it can overreact to traffic spikes, spinning up too many instances and inflating your bill. Worse, if it scales too slowly, your application lags or crashes.
The best approach is predictive scaling. Instead of reacting to real-time spikes, it analyzes past trends and adjusts capacity before demand increases. This balances performance and cost, ensuring resources scale only when truly necessary.
5. Clean Up IAM Permissions Before They Become a Security Risk
Cloud permissions often get assigned but rarely get reviewed. Over time, users and service accounts accumulate access to resources they don’t need, creating both security risks and potential cost issues.
For example, a user with unnecessary admin rights might accidentally deploy high-cost instances. Or an old, forgotten service account could still have permission to create expensive storage buckets. If it’s not being used, it shouldn’t exist.
Start by auditing IAM roles and permissions. If a user or service hasn’t accessed a resource in months, revoke their permissions. Most cloud platforms have built-in tools that help identify unused roles—use them regularly to keep IAM access under control.
6. Get Visibility into Shadow IT Before It Gets Expensive
Use Cloud Cost Management Tools
Shadow IT happens when teams deploy cloud resources outside of central IT oversight. Developers spin up test environments and forget about them. Someone launches a proof-of-concept server that never gets shut down. Over time, these abandoned resources silently inflate cloud costs.
Without proper cost management tools, it’s nearly impossible to track where all your spending goes. A good cost tracking system should:
- Show which teams or users deployed which resources.
- Highlight underutilized or forgotten resources.
- Enforce tagging policies to ensure every instance has a clear owner.
By enforcing visibility, you avoid surprises in your cloud bill and keep unnecessary spending in check.
Set Up Alerts for Unexpected Spikes
A single forgotten high-cost instance running over the weekend can add thousands to your bill. Budget alerts help catch spending issues before they get out of control.
Most cloud platforms allow you to:
- Set up alerts when spending exceeds a certain amount.
- Flag unusual spikes in resource usage.
- Automatically shut down idle instances to prevent runaway costs.
These alerts act as an early warning system—a simple but powerful way to prevent accidental overspending.
7. Switch to Reserved or Savings Plans Without Guesswork
Reserved instances and savings plans can significantly cut cloud costs, but only if you commit the right amount. Many teams make two major mistakes:
- Overcommitting—locking in too much capacity and wasting money.
- Undercommitting—failing to reserve enough and missing potential savings.
The best way to avoid this? Analyze at least six months of usage data before making a commitment. If a workload runs consistently, reservations make sense. But if usage fluctuates, consider a more flexible plan to avoid paying for unused capacity.
Final Thoughts
Cloud waste isn’t just about huge mistakes—it’s about small inefficiencies adding up. Storage that never gets cleaned up. Instances that are bigger than they need to be. Forgotten resources draining money in the background.
The good news? All of these issues are fixable.
The best approach isn’t a massive overhaul—it’s tackling one small change at a time. Pick one of these optimizations today. Whether it’s deleting old snapshots, right-sizing instances, or setting up budget alerts, every step saves money.
Companies like Skiltrek understand the importance of cloud efficiency. By staying on top of cloud optimization, businesses can cut costs, improve performance, and ensure their infrastructure scales without waste
There’s zero downside—only lower bills and better performance.
References:
Amazon Web Services. (2024). AWS well-architected framework: Cost optimization pillar (Version 2024.1). https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/cost-optimization-pillar/welcome.html
Microsoft Azure. (2024). Cloud adoption framework – Cost optimization pillar. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/govern/cost-management/
Google Cloud. (2024). Best practices for optimizing cloud costs. https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/cost-optimization
