Monthly Cloud Cost Review Checklist
A cloud cost optimization checklist for a monthly AWS, Azure or GCP review: spot anomalies, remove waste, rightsize, check commitments and assign owners.
- Typical schedule monthly
- The checklist 5 sections, 18 items
- Variables
{{month}}
Use this checklist once a month, after the previous month's invoice is final, to review what you spend on cloud infrastructure and why. It suits small teams on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or smaller providers (e.g. Hetzner, DigitalOcean), where nobody does FinOps full time but the bill still grows every quarter. An hour a month is usually enough to catch the expensive surprises.
Who owns it
An engineer with billing access owns the run, ideally rotating so more people understand the bill. They review the numbers and clean up obvious waste. Larger changes, such as rightsizing a database or buying commitments, go to the service owner as tickets.
Common pitfalls
- Looking only at the total. A flat total can hide one service growing fast while another shrinks. Compare by service and by tag with the previous month.
- Untagged resources. If spend cannot be traced to a team or project, nobody feels responsible for it. Fix tagging before you chase savings.
- The quiet line items. Data transfer, NAT gateways, snapshots, logs and idle load balancers rarely show up in architecture diagrams, but they do show up on the bill.
- Commitments bought on a guess. Reserved instances and savings plans save money only on usage you keep. Rightsize first, then commit.
Schedule the run in Runbook for the first week of each month, and add a note to each item with the amount you saved.
The checklist: Cloud cost review {{month}}
Understand the bill
-
Total spend for
{{month}}compared with the previous month and the budget -
Spend broken down by service, account or project, and the biggest changes explained
-
Cost anomalies and budget alerts from
{{month}}reviewed -
Untagged or unallocated spend identified and assigned to an owner
Use the provider's cost tools (e.g. AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, GCP Billing reports) grouped by tag.
Remove waste
-
Idle or stopped instances reviewed, and unneeded ones deleted
-
Unattached volumes, old snapshots and unused machine images deleted
-
Unused IP addresses, load balancers and NAT gateways removed
-
Forgotten test and preview environments shut down
-
Log, metric and storage retention checked against what you actually need
Lifecycle rules that move old objects to cheaper storage classes often help.
Rightsize
-
Instances and databases with consistently low utilisation flagged for rightsizing
-
Non-production environments scheduled to stop outside working hours optional
-
Data transfer costs reviewed for avoidable cross-region or internet egress
Commitments and pricing
-
Coverage and utilisation of reserved instances or savings plans checked optional
-
Expiring commitments identified and the renewal decision made optional
-
Marketplace and third-party SaaS charges on the cloud bill reviewed
Follow up
-
Savings actions for
{{month}}logged with estimated monthly amount and owner -
Budgets and anomaly alerts adjusted to the new baseline
-
Short cost summary shared with the team and leadership
Checklist as Markdown
Frequently asked questions
What should a monthly cloud cost review include?
Compare spend with the previous month and the budget, explain the biggest changes, assign untagged spend, remove obvious waste and flag rightsizing candidates. Check commitments such as savings plans where you use them. Finish with a short list of actions, each with an owner.
What is FinOps?
FinOps is a practice where engineering, finance and business teams share responsibility for cloud spending. Engineers see what their decisions cost, and finance gets reliable forecasts. For a small team, a monthly review with clear owners already covers the core of it.
What are the quickest wins in cloud cost optimization?
Deleting unused resources, such as idle instances, unattached disks, old snapshots and forgotten test environments, is usually the fastest win. Next come stopping non-production environments at night and shortening log retention. Commitments come last, after you have rightsized.
Updated