AWS cost optimisation for Indian startups: the practical guide

Where the money is going

Before cutting anything, you need to know what you're actually paying for. Open AWS Cost Explorer and filter by the last 3 months. In 90% of the Indian startups we audit, the waste comes from the same four places:

• ·Over-provisioned EC2 instances: you spun up a t3.large for a service that uses 8% CPU on average
• ·NAT Gateway data transfer: often ₹15,000-40,000/month that nobody notices until it compounds
• ·Unused or orphaned resources: old snapshots, unattached EBS volumes, idle load balancers
• ·On-Demand pricing for predictable workloads: paying 3x what a Reserved Instance would cost

The quick wins (implement this week)

These changes typically take 2-4 hours and have immediate impact on your next bill:

• ·Right-size your EC2 instances: use AWS Compute Optimizer to get specific recommendations. Most teams can drop to the next size down with zero performance impact.
• ·Delete unused EBS snapshots and volumes: go to EC2 > Volumes, filter for 'available' status, these are unattached and still costing you money.
• ·Review your NAT Gateway: if you're using a NAT Gateway just so Lambda or EC2 can call external APIs, switch to VPC endpoints for AWS services and allow direct internet access for non-sensitive workloads.
• ·Turn off dev/staging environments outside business hours: a Lambda function that stops EC2 at 8pm and starts at 9am saves 55% of compute costs on non-production environments.

The bigger move: Reserved Instances and Savings Plans

If you've been running on AWS for more than 6 months and your usage is stable, this single change will cut your compute bill by 40-72%.

• ·1-year Reserved Instances: 40% discount over On-Demand, no upfront payment required
• ·3-year Reserved Instances: up to 72% discount, makes sense for your database and core API servers
• ·Compute Savings Plans: more flexible than RIs, cover EC2 + Fargate + Lambda across any region
• ·The rule: anything that runs more than 6 hours a day should be on a Savings Plan or Reserved Instance

Moving specific workloads off AWS entirely

Some workloads are genuinely better and cheaper on other platforms. This isn't a full migration, it's carving out the right pieces.

• ·Static frontend: move from S3 + CloudFront to Vercel or Cloudflare Pages. Zero cost, better DX, no configuration.
• ·Postgres database: if you're paying for RDS, evaluate Neon or PlanetScale. For startups under 10 GB, the savings are significant.
• ·Object storage: S3 is fine, but Cloudflare R2 has no egress fees. For Indian apps that serve assets to users, this alone can save ₹10,000-30,000/month.
• ·Redis/caching: ElastiCache has a minimum cost of ~₹3,000/month. Upstash Redis starts at ₹0 with pay-per-use pricing.

The audit checklist

Run through this list to find your specific waste. Most teams find 4-6 items that together account for 60-70% of their bill:

• ·EC2: check CPU utilisation, anything below 20% average is a candidate for downsizing
• ·RDS: check storage auto-scaling, remove unnecessary read replicas in non-production
• ·CloudWatch Logs: set a 14-day retention policy on all log groups (default is never expire)
• ·Load Balancers: any ALB/NLB with zero or low traffic? Delete them.
• ·Elastic IPs: unassociated EIPs cost ₹400/month each, release the ones you don't use
• ·Data Transfer: check your inter-region and internet egress costs, these are often invisible until they're large

Want us to do the audit for you?

We do cloud cost audits for Indian startups. In most cases we find 50-70% savings within the first review. The audit is free, we charge only for implementation.

Frequently asked questions