AWS cost optimization, paid for out of what we save you.
Hands-on optimization across your whole stack, done by us, following your process. We take a share of the savings we actually deliver: no retainer, no day rate.
Run by Cristian Magherusan-Stanciu, a former AWS Specialist Solutions Architect for Spot and Graviton and the creator of AutoSpotting. We work with teams spending $100k+/month on AWS.
What we optimize
We cover the usual compute, container, storage and networking services, and many more. On compute and containers that means EC2, Lambda, EKS, ECS, Fargate and EMR, plus the managed services that run on EC2 under the hood: RDS, ElastiCache and OpenSearch.
For each of these we apply the strategy that fits the workload: instance type selection, right-sizing, autoscaling and elasticity, adopting Spot instances, migrating to Graviton, and buying Savings Plans and Reserved Instances sized to what you will actually run.
On storage we pick the right S3 storage class, add lifecycle policies, and right-size EBS volumes and their provisioned IOPS and throughput, including the EBS volumes behind RDS. On networking we cut inter-AZ traffic, add VPC endpoints and PrivateLink, and improve the CloudFront cache ratio. Storage, logging and networking are worth calling out because no Savings Plan or Reserved Instance ever covers them: they get cheaper only when someone optimizes them.
Much of this is not only about cost. Teams routinely see better performance after the same exercise, most visibly when adopting Graviton, using VPC endpoints and improving the cache ratio.
You pay out of the savings, not a day rate
A day rate pays for effort. We charge on results, so our incentive matches yours: we make money only when you save money. If a change does not save anything, it is not billed.
We take a share of the savings, typically 10% to 30%, sized to the footprint under our optimization scope, with larger footprints paying a lower share. Each change is billed at that share for its first 12 months, then retires: from then on you keep 100% of what it saves. Savings are measured automatically from your real before-and-after billing data, per change, so what you pay always ties back to the actual bill.
It typically costs less than a FinOps SaaS subscription, and we will agree a cap if you want one. We can also bill through AWS Marketplace.
How the engagement works
Low-risk, reversible changes, shipped through your own review and rollout.
- 1
Discovery call
With the NDA and paperwork signed up front, a short call to walk through your stack and your goals, so the work starts on the right priorities.
- 2
Read-only access
You grant scoped, read-only access first, so we can analyze your setup in detail. No standing admin, minimal IAM, expanded only when a change needs it.
- 3
First changes in your repo
We open pull requests in your repositories, usually within days of getting access. They follow your process and stay low-risk and reversible.
- 4
Weekly sync
A 30-minute weekly sync with one engineer on your side. That plus occasional PR reviews is your team's entire time investment.
- 5
First measured savings
Changes land and the effect shows up on your bill in the same billing period.
Where the savings really come from
Commitments are the easy win, an afternoon of work, but they only ever cover part of the bill. Most of what we find is small: a few hundred dollars a month each, low-risk, with no migration project. Individually, none of them justify pulling an engineer off the roadmap for half a day to research, execute and verify, which is exactly why they never get done.
The arithmetic works for us, because we automated it.
Every change is prepared with help from tooling we built and battle-tested over many engagements, then still ships as a pull request through your own review. What costs your engineer half a day costs us half an hour, so the small wins finally get captured. One piece of that tooling, our EBS Optimizer, is available on its own for teams who just want their EBS volumes right-sized.
AWS cost optimization results
Anonymised by industry and spend band. Every number measured against the bill before the change.
FinTech scale-up, US
$1.1M+/yr
delivered cost avoidance
~$3M/year AWS under an EDP. In the first two weeks we shipped ~$378k/year of savings, enough to cover our entire fee within a few months. Then IO1 to GP3, right-configured Aurora, RIs, ElastiCache to Valkey and more.
E-commerce SaaS, US
~30%
off the bill, ~$178k/yr
A bill growing with the business, from $30k to $50k/month. Cut to $36k/month in 3-4 months across RDS, compute, ElastiCache, S3 and EBS.
Marketing/compliance SaaS, US
$300k/yr
identified in a review
~$1M/year AWS. A prioritised list across S3, RDS, ECS+Spot, EBS and CloudWatch Logs, for the team to implement at their own pace.
Every engagement is under NDA, so client names and identifying details are anonymised; references are available under NDA. More detail on the case studies page.
Related
Go deeper on AWS Graviton migration and FinOps consulting. See the underlying cost and performance optimization service, start with a free audit, or run the standalone EBS Optimizer.
AWS cost optimization questions
What size client do you work with?
What if you do not save us anything?
How much access do you need?
What if we already have a FinOps tool?
Ready to see what is on your bill?
Book a discovery call. We take read-only access and give you a prioritised list of what we found and what it is worth.
Stop paying for cloud you do not use
A share of what we save you, measured against your real bill. Nothing if we save you nothing.