How I Cut Our Cloud Bill by 40% Without Changing a Single Line of Application Code

Description and use

Cut AWS bill by 40 % in 3 hrs without code changes: removed orphaned resources and right‑sized instances.

Problem

High AWS bill due to forgotten or underutilized resources and over-provisioned instances.

Outcome

Reduced monthly AWS spend from $4,200 to $2,520 by eliminating $863/month of orphaned resources and right‑sizing instances, achieving a 40% bill reduction.

Workflow

• Identify orphaned resources with a Bash audit script
• List orphaned EIPs, unattached EBS volumes, old snapshots, stopped instances, idle load balancers, unused security groups
• Delete or deallocate identified resources
• Analyze running EC2 instances for CPU utilization over 14 days
• Recommend downsizing or keeping instances based on avg/max CPU thresholds
• Apply recommended instance type changes
• Re‑run audit to confirm savings

Evidence

After 3 hours of cleanup — no code changes, no architecture redesign — the bill dropped to $2,520/month.

Source

3 orphaned Elastic IPs ($108/month)

Source

14 unattached EBS volumes ($280/month)

Source