Your cloud bill is probably 30% too high. The 30-minute test

Most companies think they pay the right amount for cloud. Almost all of them pay too much. Run this 30-minute test and find out how much, before the next invoice does it for you."We've got the cloud under control" is a reassuring phrase. Most of the time it's an assumption. A resource nobody has reviewed in months is not optimized: it's a bill you pay out of inertia.Cloud doesn't burn your money all at once. It does it slowly and quietly: an oversized instance here, a forgotten storage volume there, a test environment running nights and weekends for no one. At month end it all adds up to a number nobody can explain line by line.To find out how much you're overpaying, you don't need an expensive consultant. You need about 30 minutes. Here's the test.

In short

• Waste is the rule, not the exception. On average, about 27% of cloud spend is wasted, a figure that has been stable for years (Flexera 2025). On a 10,000 EUR monthly bill, that's 2,700 EUR thrown away.
• You pay for capacity you don't use. Many instances run at just 10–20% CPU utilization, yet you pay for them at full capacity.
• Budgets are blown consistently. Organizations exceed their cloud budget by around 17%, and managing cloud cost is the top challenge for 84% of them (Flexera 2025).
• Seeing your costs and optimizing them are different things. Many companies already have a cost dashboard. Few act on it.
• You can self-assess in about 30 minutes, with three checks. Any "we don't know" is a saving you're missing.

The test: three checks in 30 minutes

You don't need expensive tools. You need your cloud console and an honest look.

• Sizing. Look at your few largest instances and their average CPU and memory utilization over the past two weeks. If the average sits below 20%, you're paying for a machine much bigger than you need; right-sizing typically cuts that compute cost by 40 to 60%.
• Forgotten resources. Look for storage volumes attached to nothing, snapshots months old, unused IPs and load balancers, test or staging environments running 24/7. Anything untouched for 30 days is a candidate for shutdown.
• Discount coverage. If you have steady workloads running around the clock and you pay everything at on-demand rates, you're leaving money on the table. Reserved instances, savings plans, and committed use discounts cut these costs by up to 72%.

A bonus check if you have five more minutes: non-production environments. A dev or test environment switched off nights and weekends runs only during work hours, roughly a quarter of the time. You pay the difference every month.Worth remembering: a cost dashboard is not an optimized bill. Visibility is only the first step. Most companies see where the money goes but never get to acting on it, and the waste stays right there, predictable and recurring. The test above doesn't fix the problem, but it shows you exactly how big it is.

Frequently asked questions

How much can I save with cloud cost optimization? Most clients see a 30 to 50% reduction in their monthly bill within about 90 days, through right-sizing, reserved instances, orphaned-resource cleanup, and storage tiering.How long does a cloud cost audit take? Between 5 and 10 business days. We deliver a prioritized savings roadmap with projected monthly savings for each action.Will optimization affect my performance or availability? No. We only recommend changes that maintain or improve performance and availability, based on real utilization metrics.Does it work for AWS, GCP, and Azure? Yes. We optimize costs across AWS, GCP, and Azure: right-sizing, reserved instances, spot instances, and storage and data-transfer optimization.How much does it cost and what's the ROI? A typical engagement costs between 1,000 and 3,000 EUR and usually delivers 500 to 3,000 EUR in monthly savings, with a payback period of 1 to 4 months.

Find your waste before the next invoice does

The test above shows how big the problem is. The next step is fixing it. Our Cloud Cost Optimization & FinOps service covers exactly that: a deep cost audit, right-sizing, reserved instances, orphaned-resource cleanup, and a FinOps culture that prevents future waste. In our engagements, this usually means a monthly bill that is 30 to 50% lower, with no loss of performance. If you optimize one thing this quarter, optimize the thing you already pay for every month without using.

FinOps & Cost Optimization

Stop overpaying for cloud

Deep cost audit and FinOps practices. Typical savings of 30 to 50% off your monthly bill with no loss of performance. Full audit in 5 to 10 business days.

30–50%

less

Optimize your bill →