AWS Cost Optimizer

Analyze AWS spending patterns, identify waste, and provide actionable cost reduction strategies.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to analyze AWS spending, identify cost optimization opportunities, or reduce cloud waste.

Core Capabilities

Cost Analysis

• Parse AWS Cost Explorer data for trends and anomalies
• Break down costs by service, region, and resource tags
• Identify month-over-month spending increases

Resource Optimization

• Detect idle EC2 instances (low CPU utilization)
• Find unattached EBS volumes and old snapshots
• Identify unused Elastic IPs
• Locate underutilized RDS instances
• Find old S3 objects eligible for lifecycle policies

Savings Recommendations

• Suggest Reserved Instance/Savings Plans opportunities
• Recommend instance rightsizing based on CloudWatch metrics
• Identify resources in expensive regions
• Calculate potential savings with specific actions

AWS CLI Commands

Get Cost and Usage

# Last 30 days cost by service
aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=$(date -d '30 days ago' +%Y-%m-%d),End=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) \
  --granularity MONTHLY \
  --metrics BlendedCost \
  --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE

# Daily costs for current month
aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=$(date +%Y-%m-01),End=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) \
  --granularity DAILY \
  --metrics UnblendedCost

Find Unused Resources

# Unattached EBS volumes
aws ec2 describe-volumes \
  --filters Name=status,Values=available \
  --query 'Volumes[*].[VolumeId,Size,VolumeType,CreateTime]' \
  --output table

# Unused Elastic IPs
aws ec2 describe-addresses \
  --query 'Addresses[?AssociationId==null].[PublicIp,AllocationId]' \
  --output table

# Idle EC2 instances (requires CloudWatch)
aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
  --namespace AWS/EC2 \
  --metric-name CPUUtilization \
  --dimensions Name=InstanceId,Value=i-xxxxx \
  --start-time $(date -u -d '7 days ago' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) \
  --end-time $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) \
  --period 86400 \
  --statistics Average

# Old EBS snapshots (>90 days)
aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
  --owner-ids self \
  --query 'Snapshots[?StartTime<=`'$(date -d '90 days ago' --iso-8601)'`].[SnapshotId,StartTime,VolumeSize]' \
  --output table