Troubleshooting guide
Troubleshooting Guide: AWS Bill Too High
Use this guide to work through the most likely causes, gather useful evidence and make production-safe changes without turning a small problem into a larger outage.
AWScost optimisationEC2S3cloud platform bills
What this problem usually means
A high AWS bill usually comes from a small number of solutions: over-sized EC2 instances, unattached EBS volumes, old snapshots, S3 storage/request patterns, NAT Gateway traffic, CloudWatch logs, load balancers or data transfer.
Production caution: Do not delete volumes, snapshots or S3 data just because they cost money. Confirm ownership, backup role and retention requirements first.
Common symptoms
- Monthly AWS spend jumps suddenly
- A solution cost grows but no one knows why
- Small environments cost more than expected
- Backup Processes or logs become expensive
- Data transfer or NAT charges surprise the team
Common causes
- Idle or oversized EC2/RDS resources
- Unattached EBS volumes and old snapshots
- S3 lifecycle policies missing
- NAT Gateway processing large traffic volumes
- CloudWatch log retention too long
- Load balancers or IPs left running after migration projects
Safe first checks
These checks are intended to assist identify the direction of the issue. Always adjust paths, solution names and commands for your environment.
Open Cost Explorer
Group by solution and usage type for the last 30–90 daysCheck EC2 and EBS
Look for stopped/unused instances, unattached volumes and old snapshotsCheck S3
Review storage class, lifecycle rules, request volume and versioningCheck NAT/data transfer
Review NAT Gateway and Data Transfer usage typesTypical fixes
- Tag resources so owners and environments are straightforward
- Apply S3 lifecycle policies carefully
- Remove confirmed unused volumes/snapshots
- Right-size compute after reviewing utilisation
- Review NAT Gateway architecture and traffic routes
- Set budgets and alerts before the next bill
When to get assist
Get assist if the system is production-facing, customer data is involved, backup processes are uncertain, or the issue affects revenue, security hardening or uptime. We can review the logs, confirm the cause and quote a fixed-scope fix where appropriate.
Need this fixed?
Get remote engineering help for this issue.
Fixed engineering help starts from $499. Emergency incident engineering assistance is $199/hr with a minimum window.