5 EC2 Cost Optimization Tricks That Take 5 Minutes Each

Your EC2 instances are probably costing 2-3x more than they should. Here are 5 quick fixes that take 5 minutes each but can save you 30-70% on your monthly AWS bill.

1. Enable AWS Compute Optimizer (2 minutes)

AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes your EC2 usage and recommends cheaper instance types.

How to enable:

Real example:

• Current: m5.2xlarge - $280/month
• Recommended: m5.xlarge - $140/month
• Savings: $140/month (50%)

2. Stop Dev/Test Instances at Night (5 minutes)

Most development instances don't need to run 24/7.

One-time setup with Lambda:

Or use AWS Instance Scheduler (click-to-deploy):

Impact:

• 10 t3.medium dev instances
• Running 24/7: $300/month
• Running 10 hours/day: $125/month
• Savings: $175/month (58%)

3. Switch to Graviton Instances (3 minutes)

AWS Graviton processors offer 40% better price-performance than x86.

Find ARM-compatible workloads:

Migration:

Savings example:

• m6i.large (x86): $70/month
• m7g.large (Graviton): $50/month
• Savings: $20/month per instance (29%)

4. Buy Compute Savings Plans (5 minutes)

Commit to $X/hour of compute for 40-70% discount.

Calculate your baseline:

Purchase Savings Plan:

1. Go to AWS Cost Explorer → Savings Plans
2. View Recommendations
3. Buy a 1-year or 3-year plan

Example:

• Current on-demand: $1,000/month
• 1-year Savings Plan: $650/month
• Savings: $350/month (35%)

5. Use Spot Instances for Fault-Tolerant Workloads (5 minutes)

Spot instances cost 70-90% less than on-demand.

Good for:

• CI/CD pipelines
• Batch processing
• Video encoding
• Machine learning training

Launch Spot via CLI:

Or in EC2 Launch Template:

Savings:

• On-Demand c5.xlarge: $150/month
• Spot c5.xlarge: $30/month
• Savings: $120/month (80%)

Bonus: Set Up Cost Alerts (2 minutes)

Get notified before bills spiral out of control.

Total Monthly Savings Example

Before optimization:

10× m5.2xlarge (always-on):     $2,800
5× t3.medium (dev, always-on):  $  150
Total:                          $2,950/month

After 25 minutes of optimization:

5× m7g.xlarge (rightsized):     $  250
5× m5.xlarge (Savings Plan):    $  455
5× t3.medium (scheduled):       $   63
5× c5.xlarge spot (batch):      $  150
Total:                          $  918/month

Savings: $2,032/month = $24,384/year 🎉

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Action Checklist

• Enable AWS Compute Optimizer
• Tag all instances with Environment tag
• Set up Instance Scheduler for dev/test
• Identify ARM-compatible workloads
• Buy Compute Savings Plan for baseline usage
• Move batch workloads to Spot
• Set up cost alerts

Each task takes 5 minutes or less.

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