{
  "id": 4981662,
  "title": "The 5 AWS cost wastes nobody remembers to clean up",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/02/the-5-aws-cost-wastes-nobody-remembers-to-clean-up",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-02T00:47:37.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/cheng_chen_cf15d7021ab913/the-5-aws-cost-wastes-nobody-remembers-to-clean-up-531o"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The cost of running unnecessary resources on AWS often goes unnoticed until it becomes a significant expense. Termination of an EC2 instance without deleting the associated EBS volume is a frequent oversight, leading to ongoing billing for unused storage. Similarly, staging and demonstration environments that are forgotten after initial use can drain resources. NAT gateways, once set up for debugging purposes, may remain active and unchecked, quickly inflating costs. Unmaintained Lambda functions and cron jobs, which continue to run needlessly, also contribute to the bill. Lastly, oversized RDS instances and elastic IP addresses that are no longer in use can accumulate costs unnoticed. The challenge lies not only in identifying what to delete but also in ensuring that such deletions won't disrupt ongoing operations. The solution lies in a tool that not only highlights potential wastage but also guides users on the safest order of deletion and necessary checks. This tool, freely available, allows users to input their AWS bill data, providing a risk-graded list of items ready for deletion.",
  "summary": "Most waste on an AWS bill is not the big obvious line items. It is the small stuff nobody remembers, still billing month after month. We have cleaned up our own bills and keep hitting the same patterns. Writing them down so you step on fewer of them. 1. You deleted the EC2 instance but forgot the EBS volume This is the most common one. You terminate a box, think you saved the money. But if you…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}