You scaled fast.
Your AWS bill scaled with you, right?
Most SaaS teams waste 20–40% of their AWS spend. We identify exactly where yours is going — and show you how to take it back.
30–45 min · High-level spend review · No access required · No commitment
The Problem
Your engineers are great.
Cloud cost ownership just isn't their job.
Your team is focused on shipping. That's the right call. But it means AWS costs grow quietly — a little every sprint, every new service, every environment that gets spun up and never turned off.
Oversized instances. Forgotten snapshots. Dev clusters running 24/7. Savings Plans set-and-forgotten two years ago. AI workloads with zero cost visibility.
FinOps is a discipline, not a one-time task. An outside perspective with no internal politics finds what busy teams miss — and keeps finding it.
The Pattern
How cloud costs spiral out of control
Ship fast
Each sprint spins up new services, environments, and resources.
No cost ownership
Engineering owns features. Nobody owns the bill.
Waste compounds
Idle resources, oversized instances, forgotten commitments — accumulating silently.
Bill surprises you
20–40% of AWS spend is recoverable. Most teams never see it.
FinOps Coverage
Where cloud spend is recovered
We look across three areas that together account for the majority of recoverable AWS spend.
Core Infrastructure
The most common source of immediate, recoverable spend. Usually yields quick wins within the first few weeks.
Idle & unused resources
Unattached EBS, idle RDS, unused Elastic IPs, forgotten NAT Gateways, old load balancers
Right-sizing
EC2, RDS, EKS nodes, Lambda memory, S3 storage classes — matched to actual usage
Generation upgrades
EC2 to Graviton, gp2 → gp3, older RDS engines, extended support charges
Scheduling & Spot
Dev/staging running 24/7, Auto Scaling gaps, Spot Instance opportunities
Typical recoverable spend: $500–$5,000+/month
FinOps Governance
Cost visibility and commitment efficiency — the structural layer that makes savings sustainable long-term.
Savings Plans & Reserved Instances
Coverage gaps, utilization rates, missed commitments, plans set-and-forgotten
Tagging & cost allocation
Ownership visibility by team, service, or product line — the foundation of FinOps
Budget alerts & anomaly detection
Proactive spend monitoring so surprises don't show up at end of month
Cost visibility & reporting
Exec-level reporting, allocation hygiene, account structure improvements
Typical commitment efficiency gain: 20–40% on covered services
AI & ML Workloads
AI and ML infrastructure is the fastest-growing cost area in AWS — and the least reviewed. High savings potential for teams building on SageMaker or Bedrock.
SageMaker inefficiencies
Idle endpoints, oversized training clusters, redundant notebook instances
GPU overprovisioning
Accelerated instances running underloaded workloads — often the single largest waste item
Training vs. inference cost imbalance
Misaligned instance types between training and inference stages
Bedrock & LLM cost unpredictability
Token-based spend patterns, prompt optimization, model selection tradeoffs
Data pipeline costs
S3 egress, Glue, Kinesis, and ETL inefficiencies that compound at scale
Often unreviewed — high savings potential, especially at AI-first companies
Most teams recognize themselves in at least one of these areas.
Book Free AWS Cost Risk CallHow We Work
Three ways to work with us
Start with a free call. Go deeper with an assessment. Or bring us in as your ongoing FinOps partner.
Free AWS Cost Risk Call
30–45 min · No access required · No commitment
Free
We review your AWS setup at a high level, identify the most likely cost risk areas, and give you an honest read on whether a deeper engagement is likely to pay off.
- High-level spend & architecture review
- Identify top savings opportunities
- No AWS access required
- Clear next steps — or an honest no
AWS Cost Optimization Assessment
One-time · Delivered in ~1 week
Typically $2K–$5K
A structured, read-only analysis of your AWS environment. We deliver a prioritized report covering every major cost driver — with estimated savings per finding and a clear action plan.
- Read-only IAM access — no production touch
- Full spend & architecture analysis
- Prioritized findings with savings estimates
- Actionable savings roadmap
- Debrief call to walk through results
Pricing depends on infrastructure size and account complexity.
Request AssessmentOngoing FinOps
Monthly retainer · Scoped to your environment
Custom
Continuous cloud cost management for teams that want ongoing visibility, discipline, and optimization — not just a one-time snapshot.
- Monthly AWS spend review
- Anomaly detection & alerting
- Savings Plans & Reserved Instance optimization
- Tagging & cost allocation hygiene
- Executive / founder cost reporting
- Quarterly deep optimization review
Scope and pricing based on your environment.
Talk About Ongoing SupportIf we don't see real savings potential on the call, we'll tell you upfront. No lock-in, no infrastructure changes required.
Who We Work With
Built for the right fit
We work best where cloud costs have been growing faster than the visibility into them.
Good fit
- SaaS companies and growth-stage startups on AWS
- Teams spending $1k–$200k/month on AWS
- Scaled quickly without a formal FinOps practice
- Engineering focused on product — not cloud cost ownership
- Running AI or ML workloads with limited spend visibility
- Looking for an independent, outside perspective
Not the right fit
- Enterprises with a dedicated FinOps or cloud finance team
- Teams on Azure or GCP
Not sure whether it's a fit? Book a free call — we'll give you an honest answer.
Igor Zhdanko
AWS Solutions Architect · FinOps Practitioner
About
Who leads the work
I've spent 10+ years working inside and alongside technical teams — enough to know that cloud cost management never makes it to the top of the backlog. Not because nobody cares, but because there's always something more urgent.
I started ZHD Cloud to bring FinOps discipline to teams that don't have time to build it themselves. I look at your AWS spend with fresh eyes, identify where the money is going, and give you a clear picture — prioritized by impact, explained without jargon.
No implementation, no lock-in. A one-time assessment or ongoing FinOps partnership — whatever level of engagement fits your stage.
AWS Solutions Architect certified. Focused on cloud cost ownership — Cost Explorer, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, right-sizing, Graviton migrations, AI/ML workload costs, and more.
Certified
AWS Solutions Architect — Associate
SAA-C03
FAQ
Common questions
Get Started
Ready to take ownership of your AWS costs?
Start with a free call, or reach out directly.
Book Free AWS Cost Risk Call
30–45 min. No access required, no commitment. We review your spend at a high level and tell you honestly whether there's meaningful savings potential.
- High-level spend & architecture review
- Identify top cost risk areas
- Understand your FinOps maturity
- No pressure, no commitment
Send a message
Prefer async? Fill this out and I'll reply within one business day.
Your AWS bill is already telling you
where you're losing money.
You just need someone to read it properly.
Book Free AWS Cost Risk CallNo access required · No commitment · Just clarity.