Cloud FinOps Audit: cut your AWS bill by 30 to 50%

A complete FinOps audit

What the FinOps audit covers

Every lever for savings is analyzed. Nothing is left to chance, and nothing is sold without quantified justification.

Instance right-sizing

Analysis of your CloudWatch metrics (CPU, RAM, network) to pinpoint oversized EC2, RDS and ElastiCache instances. Precise recommendations to downsize or switch instance type.

Savings Plans & Reserved Instances

Modeling of 1- or 3-year commitments on your stable workloads. We calculate the best balance between Compute Savings Plans, EC2 Savings Plans and Reserved Instances to maximize the discount.

Orphaned resources

Unattached EBS volumes, stale snapshots, unused Elastic IPs, Load Balancers with no targets, redundant NAT Gateways. The quick wins that pay for themselves right away.

S3 storage & lifecycle

Analysis of your S3 buckets, identification of cold data, and lifecycle rules moving it to Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier or Deep Archive. Cleanup of stale versions and multipart fragments.

Data transfer & NAT

The hidden costs: inter-AZ data transfer, overcharged NAT Gateways, uncontrolled egress. Network architecture optimization with VPC Endpoints, PrivateLink and CloudFront where it makes sense.

Compute & serverless

Migration to Graviton (ARM), Spot Instances for fault-tolerant workloads, Lambda or Fargate for intermittent loads. A case-by-case analysis with an estimate of the gains and the risks.

Process

How the FinOps audit unfolds

Three clear steps to go from a cloud bill you don't understand to a costed action plan.

1

Analyzing your bill and your resources

Read-only access to your cloud account. Analysis of Cost Explorer, CUR, CloudWatch and your full inventory. We pinpoint the 20% of services that drive 80% of the bill.

2

A costed report with quick wins

A detailed report with each recommendation, the expected monthly saving and the risk level. The quick wins (zero risk) are kept separate from the structural optimizations (medium term).

3

Implementation (optional)

You apply the recommendations yourself using the detailed guide, or you hand the implementation to me. Savings Plans and quick wins can be switched on within a few hours.

100% free

Start with a free diagnostic

Before you commit to a full audit, we spend 30 minutes together over video reviewing your current situation. You walk away with a first quantified estimate of the savings within reach on your cloud bill, and an honest opinion on whether a full audit makes sense for you.

A quick look at your 3 biggest cloud cost drivers
An estimate of the potential savings as an order of magnitude
An honest recommendation: whether a full audit is worth it for you or not
No commitment, no sales pitch, no pushy follow-up

If you'd rather go straight to the full audit

From €1,500

On quote, depending on the size of your infrastructure. Typical ROI within 1 to 3 months.

Common waste

Where the money leaks on AWS without anyone noticing

Here are the 6 kinds of waste we find in 9 out of 10 FinOps audits. If any of this sounds familiar, you're overpaying for your cloud.

Oversized EC2 instances

t3.xlarge instances running at 5% CPU, m5.4xlarge boxes used for dev workloads. Typical right-sizing saves 20 to 40% on the compute bill.

Unattached EBS volumes & forgotten snapshots

Gigabytes of EBS snapshots dating back to 2022, detached volumes that keep on billing. Immediate cleanup, immediate savings.

No Savings Plan in place

You're paying On-Demand rates for your EC2 and RDS while 80% of your workload is predictable. A well-calibrated Compute Savings Plan cuts that portion by 30 to 50%.

S3 with no lifecycle rules

Terabytes of cold data sitting in S3 Standard instead of Glacier Deep Archive. Simply switching to Intelligent-Tiering divides the cost by 3 with no code to change.

Overcharged NAT Gateways

NAT data processing costs $0.045 / GB. With well-placed VPC Endpoints, you cut 50 to 80% of that traffic. It's often the most underestimated cost item.

Dev/staging environments running 24/7

Non-prod environments running through nights and weekends. A simple auto-stop/start divides their cost by 3. Nobody logs in at 3am on a Sunday.

Cloud providers

AWS, GCP, Azure: a cloud-agnostic methodology

FinOps principles are universal. The core expertise is AWS, but audits are also possible on GCP and Azure.

Core expertise

Amazon Web Services

AWS Certified. 10+ years of production experience on EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, EKS, ECS, Aurora, CloudFront, Route 53.

Cost Explorer & CUR (Cost & Usage Report)
Compute & EC2 Savings Plans
Reserved Instances (EC2, RDS, ElastiCache)
Trusted Advisor & Compute Optimizer

Google Cloud Platform

GCP FinOps audit via a cloud-agnostic methodology. The principles of right-sizing, commitments and cleanup apply in exactly the same way.

Billing export & BigQuery
Committed Use Discounts (CUD)
Sustained Use Discounts
Recommender API & Active Assist

Microsoft Azure

Azure FinOps audit with the same methodology. Focused on the main levers: Reserved Instances, right-sizing, cleanup, Azure Advisor.

Cost Management + Billing
Azure Reserved VM Instances
Azure Hybrid Benefit
Azure Advisor & Spot VMs

Multi-cloud? If your infrastructure is spread across several cloud providers, the audit can cover all of it to identify where to consolidate workloads and optimize globally.

Why OptimyCloud

An honest, costed and actionable audit

AWS Certified & production experience

10+ years of cloud engineering on production infrastructures. The recommendations are never theoretical: they come from real cases already put into practice.

Every recommendation is costed

No vague "you could save money." Each recommendation comes with a precise monthly estimate, a risk level and a time to implement.

Read-only access only

The audit runs through an IAM role with ReadOnlyAccess. No change is ever made without your explicit approval. Your infrastructure stays untouched throughout the analysis.

A freelancer, not an agency

You talk directly to the engineer who runs the audit. No project manager, no agency markup, no needless jargon. One point of contact, responsive and transparent.

Frequently asked questions about the FinOps audit

What is FinOps and why does it matter for an SME running on the cloud?

FinOps (Financial Operations) is the practice of optimizing cloud costs while keeping performance and reliability intact. For an SME it matters because cloud bills swell fast without anyone noticing: oversized instances, forgotten resources, no Savings Plans in place. On average, a FinOps audit uncovers 30 to 50% of potential savings on the monthly bill.

What realistic savings can I expect from a FinOps audit?

The savings depend on how mature your cloud infrastructure is. On an AWS setup that has never been optimized, the gains are often 30 to 50% of the monthly bill. On an infrastructure that has already been worked on, we aim for 10 to 20%. The quick wins (forgotten snapshots, unattached EBS volumes, unused Elastic IPs) take a few hours to put in place and pay for themselves immediately.

How much does a FinOps audit cost?

A FinOps audit for an SME costs between 1,500 and 5,000 euros depending on the size and complexity of the infrastructure. The return on investment is immediate: the monthly savings cover the cost of the audit within 1 to 3 months. Every engagement is quoted upfront with an estimate of the potential savings before you commit.

Do you only work on AWS, or also on GCP and Azure?

OptimyCloud is AWS Certified with deep expertise across the AWS ecosystem (EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, EKS, Savings Plans). FinOps audits are also possible on GCP and Azure thanks to a cloud-agnostic methodology and tools that analyze your bills and resources. The core FinOps principles (right-sizing, commitments, cleanup, transfer optimization) apply in exactly the same way across every cloud provider.

How long does a full FinOps audit take?

A full FinOps audit takes between 3 and 7 business days depending on the size of your infrastructure. That covers analyzing the detailed bill, inventorying your resources, identifying waste, modeling Savings Plans and writing the report with a costed action plan.

What does the final FinOps audit report contain?

The FinOps report contains: an overview of your current cloud spend, a detailed list of the waste identified, right-sizing recommendations instance by instance, modeling of the optimal Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, a prioritized action plan (quick wins / medium term / long term), and a quantified estimate of the expected monthly savings for each recommendation.

What level of access do you need to my cloud account?

On AWS, an IAM role with the ReadOnlyAccess and Billing policies is enough. On GCP, a service account with the Viewer and Billing Account Viewer roles. On Azure, a user with the Reader and Cost Management Reader roles. No change is ever made without your explicit approval. You keep full control of your infrastructure for the entire duration of the audit.

Stop overpaying for your cloud

Book 30 minutes over video. We look together at your current cloud bill (AWS, GCP or Azure) and I give you an honest estimate of the savings within reach. No commitment, no sales pitch, no pushy follow-up.

You can also browse all our offerings or our SEO audit.

100% free · 30 minutes · a quantified estimate