The FinOps blog for engineering and finance teams cutting AWS and Google Cloud costs

Why cloud bills jump, how to catch it early, and how to cut waste without breaking anything. For more hands-on fixes, see the guides.

• Cloud rightsizing: find and fix oversized instancesHow to spot oversized cloud instances from CPU and memory patterns, pick the right size, and downsize EC2 and Compute Engine without hurting production.
• Cloud budget alerts: AWS Budgets, GCP budgets and spend notificationsSet up AWS budget alerts and Google Cloud budget notifications that people act on: which budgets to create, what thresholds to use, and where alerts fall short.
• Cloud cost allocation by team: tagging, showback and chargebackTag AWS resources and label Google Cloud resources by team, split shared costs fairly, and choose between showback and chargeback, with a tagging policy that holds.
• Cloud cost anomaly detection: catch billing anomalies earlyHow cloud cost anomaly detection works, how to set up AWS Cost Anomaly Detection and Google Cloud's, and how to tell a real billing anomaly from normal growth.
• Cloud bill spike? The usual causes of unexpected cloud chargesThe usual causes of a sudden AWS cost increase or Google Cloud bill spike, how to trace unexpected cloud charges to a resource, and how to stop the next one.
• Idle and orphaned cloud resources: find them and clean them upA checklist of idle and orphaned cloud resources that bill for nothing on AWS and Google Cloud, from unattached EBS volumes to forgotten IPs, and how to clean them up safely.
• FinOps for startups: cloud spend control without a FinOps teamCloud cost management for a small team with no FinOps hire: the few habits that matter, what to automate, and when a startup should pay for a tool.
• Read-only FinOps tools: safe, non-destructive cloud cost analysisWhy a cloud cost analyzer should only read, what read-only access looks like on AWS and Google Cloud, and how non-destructive cloud optimization still gets savings shipped.
• Best cloud cost optimization tools in 2026, comparedThe best FinOps and cloud cost optimization software in 2026, from free AWS cost management tools to paid platforms, with prices, strengths and who each fits.
• AWS Cost Explorer vs Azure Cost Management, comparedAWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Management side by side: data, granularity, budgets, anomaly alerts, exports and price, and where native cloud cost tools stop.