Fintech Startup Cuts AWS Costs by 45%
Challenge
AWS bill growing 20% month-over-month with no visibility into cost drivers.
Solution
Comprehensive cost audit, right-sizing, Reserved Instances, and FinOps process implementation.
Results
45% cost reduction ($180K/year saved), full cost visibility, automated alerts.
This fast-growing fintech startup had scaled rapidly on AWS, but their infrastructure costs were scaling even faster. With no tagging strategy and no cost allocation, the team had no idea which services or teams were driving the bill.
We started with a thorough cost analysis using Cost Explorer and custom queries. Within the first week, we identified $60K in annual savings from unused resources alone — idle RDS instances, unattached EBS volumes, and oversized NAT Gateways.
Next, we right-sized their EC2 fleet based on actual utilization data. Most instances were running at 15-20% CPU utilization. By moving to appropriate instance types and implementing auto-scaling, we reduced compute costs by 35%.
Finally, we implemented a FinOps practice: tagging strategy, cost allocation, weekly reviews, and automated alerts when spending exceeds thresholds.