Cloud Cost Savings Calculator for AWS & Azure
Estimate how much of your monthly AWS and Azure spend could be wasted — and see the practical steps you can take to reduce it.
Most cloud bills grow quietly. Unused resources, oversized instances, idle environments, poor storage lifecycle rules and missing commitment planning can all add cost without anyone deliberately increasing spend.
Estimate your AWS & Azure savings
1. Your monthly cloud spend
How to reduce AWS and Azure costs yourself
Seven practical areas any team can work through before bringing in outside help.
1. Find unused cloud resources
Unused cloud resources are one of the easiest places to start. Look for idle EC2 instances, Azure VMs, unattached EBS volumes, unmanaged disks, old load balancers, unused public IPs, abandoned test environments and orphaned snapshots.
- Check stopped and running compute
- Find unattached disks
- Review old snapshots
- Look for unused load balancers
- Check test and development environments
- Remove resources no longer linked to active projects
2. Right-size AWS EC2 and Azure VMs
Many cloud environments are oversized because teams choose safe instance sizes early and never revisit them. Right-sizing should consider CPU, memory, network, disk I/O, peak usage and resilience requirements.
- Review CPU and memory usage over 30–90 days
- Identify consistently low-utilisation servers
- Compare instance families
- Resize non-production first
- Avoid cutting production capacity blindly
- Monitor before and after changes
3. Improve storage lifecycle management
Storage waste builds quietly through old backups, snapshots, logs, unmanaged disks and data kept on expensive tiers.
- Review AWS S3 lifecycle rules
- Review Azure Blob Storage tiers
- Remove old unattached disks
- Delete unnecessary snapshots
- Check backup retention settings
- Move archive data to cheaper storage tiers
4. Review Reserved Instances, Savings Plans & Azure Reservations
Predictable workloads may be cheaper when covered by commitment discounts. However, commitments can become wasteful if bought without understanding future usage.
- Identify stable workloads
- Review 30/60/90-day usage patterns
- Separate production from experimental usage
- Avoid overcommitting too early
- Review AWS Savings Plans
- Review Azure Reservations
- Track actual utilisation after purchase
5. Fix tagging and ownership
Cost optimisation is harder when nobody knows who owns each resource. Poor tagging leads to poor accountability.
- Tag by environment
- Tag by product
- Tag by owner
- Tag by cost centre
- Tag by customer or workload where relevant
- Create monthly untagged resource reports
6. Set budgets, alerts and anomaly detection
The best time to catch cloud waste is before it becomes normal.
- Set AWS Budgets
- Set Azure Cost Management budgets
- Enable anomaly alerts
- Create weekly cost reports
- Send alerts to engineering and finance
- Review cost changes after deployments
7. Build a monthly cloud cost review routine
Cloud cost optimisation is not a one-off task. New waste appears as teams build, test, scale and release.
- Review top services by spend
- Compare month-on-month change
- Identify new expensive resources
- Review non-production environments
- Check commitment utilisation
- Assign actions to owners
- Track savings delivered
What is a cloud cost savings calculator?
A cloud cost savings calculator helps estimate how much of your AWS or Azure spend may be avoidable. It does not replace a full cloud audit, but it gives a useful first view of where savings might exist.
Cloud waste often comes from a combination of unused resources, oversized infrastructure, poor storage management, missing commitment discounts, weak tagging and limited cost ownership.
For SaaS businesses, the issue is often more difficult because infrastructure changes quickly. Product teams release new features, developers create test environments, workloads grow, customers onboard, and cloud bills gradually increase.
A good cloud cost optimisation process should reduce waste without damaging performance, reliability or delivery speed.
AWS Cost Savings Calculator
AWS cost optimisation usually involves reviewing EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, NAT Gateway, data transfer, CloudWatch, backups, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
Azure Cost Savings Calculator
Azure cost optimisation usually involves reviewing Azure VMs, managed disks, Blob Storage, SQL databases, App Services, Azure Monitor, backup, networking and Azure Reservations.
Cloud cost savings need care
Cutting cloud costs is not just about switching things off. Safe savings might include removing unattached disks or unused snapshots. Riskier savings might involve resizing production systems, changing architecture, altering database capacity or changing commitment plans. Cloud cost optimisation should include both financial and technical review.
Want a second pair of eyes on your AWS or Azure bill?
If your cloud bill has grown and you are not sure where the money is going, IG CloudOps can help you review your AWS and Azure environment and identify realistic savings.
No hard sell. Just a practical review of where savings may exist and what to do next.
Cloud Cost Savings Calculator FAQs
What is a cloud cost savings calculator?+
A cloud cost savings calculator estimates how much of your AWS or Azure spend may be wasted through unused resources, oversized infrastructure, poor storage management, missing commitment discounts and weak cost visibility.
How accurate is this calculator?+
It provides an indicative estimate, not a guaranteed saving. A full cloud cost audit would be needed to confirm exact savings, risks and implementation steps.
Can this calculator be used for both AWS and Azure?+
Yes. It includes AWS spend, Azure spend and common waste categories that apply across both platforms.
What is a typical cloud saving?+
Many organisations can find savings in the 10–30% range, depending on how mature their cloud management is. Some environments have less waste, while others have more.
Will reducing cloud costs affect performance?+
It can if changes are made without proper review. Safe cost optimisation should protect performance, resilience and business-critical workloads.
What AWS services should I check first?+
Common areas include EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, NAT Gateway, CloudWatch, snapshots, unused Elastic IPs, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
What Azure services should I check first?+
Common areas include Azure VMs, managed disks, Blob Storage, Azure SQL, App Service Plans, Azure Monitor, public IPs, backup and Azure Reservations.
Do I need a consultant to reduce cloud costs?+
Not always. Many basic checks can be done internally. However, if your spend is large, complex or business-critical, expert review can help avoid risky cuts and identify deeper savings.
Can IG CloudOps help after I use the calculator?+
Yes. IG CloudOps can review your AWS or Azure environment, validate likely savings, identify quick wins and help create a practical cost reduction plan.