Top 10 AWS Optimization Rules You Must Enable to Stop Cloud Waste

Managing AWS costs is becoming harder every year. With new services, changing pricing models, and increased automation, cloud environments often grow without clear control. This leads to cloud waste, idle resources, and unnecessary billing surprises. That’s where AWS optimization rules come in. These automated checks help you identify misconfigurations, enforce best practices, and prevent cost leakage before it happens.

Below are the Top 10 AWS Optimization Rules you must enable in 2025 to maintain efficient, automated, and well-governed cloud infrastructure.

1. Idle EC2 Instance Detection Rule

Idle EC2 instances are one of the biggest contributors to cloud waste. Many teams launch instances for testing, demos, or temporary workloads and forget to shut them down. This rule automatically identifies EC2 instances with low CPU usage, low network activity, or no connected users. By enabling this AWS optimization rule, you can schedule automated shutdowns, apply lifecycle policies, or notify engineers before the next billing cycle hits. This prevents silent cost accumulation and improves overall cloud hygiene.

2. Underutilized RDS Instance Rule

RDS instances often run at higher capacity than needed, especially after workload changes. This optimization rule analyzes CPU utilization, IOPS, and connection metrics to detect oversized databases.Once flagged, AWS provides recommendations for downsizing or switching to burstable classes. This is critical because RDS pricing increases with storage type, instance class, and multi-AZ setups. A single oversized DB can add thousands annually.

Read More:Top 7 Ways to Reduce AWS Costs Without Changing Your Architecture

3. Unused EBS Volumes & Snapshots Rule

EBS volumes continue charging even when detached—one of the most common AWS pricing mistakes. This optimization rule identifies both unused volumes and unnecessary snapshots. You can automate cleanup, archive them to S3 Glacier, or delete them safely. Because EBS storage costs increase with IOPS and snapshot size, this rule significantly reduces hidden storage waste.

4. Low S3 Lifecycle Optimization Rule

Many organizations store large amounts of data in S3 without lifecycle policies. Over time, this leads to high costs, especially for infrequently accessed objects.This rule ensures you’re automatically transitioning data to cheaper storage classes like S3 IA, S3 One Zone-IA, or Glacier Deep Archive. It also flags buckets without versioning cleanup, which helps control object bloat and unnecessary storage duplicate costs.

5. Unassociated Elastic IP Address Rule

Elastic IPs that are not attached to running instances incur charges. This often happens when an instance is terminated but the IP remains allocated.This AWS optimization rule detects such IPs and lets you release or reassign them. Though individual charges seem small, they accumulate quickly across multi-account environments.

6. Unused Load Balancers Rule

Load balancers left running without significant traffic are another silent cost driver. Classic Load Balancers, ALBs, and NLBs all incur hourly costs—even when no requests are processed.This rule monitors active connections and request counts. If they fall below set thresholds, AWS flags the load balancer for removal or scaling adjustments. Combined with autoscaling integration, this rule prevents unnecessary compute and networking charges.

7. Rightsizing Recommendations Rule

This is one of the most valuable optimization rules. It continuously evaluates compute services (EC2, ECS, Lambda, EKS) and recommends more cost-efficient configurations. You can even integrate this rule with automation to automatically adjust instance sizes, container resource limits, and Lambda memory allocation. This leads to significant reductions in cloud automation overhead and improves performance-to-cost ratio.

8. Orphaned Resource Detection Rule

AWS environments often contain "zombie" resources—items that are no longer connected to workloads but still incur storage or compute charges.These include:

• Detached NAT gateways

• Unused ENIs

• Old security groups

• Forgotten snapshots

• KMS keys without usageThis optimization rule scans every region and account to detect orphaned resources. Removing them prevents unnecessary billing and ensures cleaner infrastructure governance.

9. DynamoDB Table Usage Rule

DynamoDB tables configured for high provisioned throughput can lead to extreme overcharges if actual traffic is low.This rule analyzes read/write capacity usage and recommends switching to on-demand mode or lowering provisioned limits. It also flags tables that haven’t been accessed for months. Enabling it ensures you’re not overspending on low-activity or dormant databases.

Read More:Top 10 AWS Cost Optimization Tools Every Cloud Engineer Should Use in 2025

10. Lambda Cost Control Rule

Lambda functions appear inexpensive, but poorly configured memory or inefficient code can rapidly increase costs.This AWS optimization rule evaluates:

• Unusually high invocation counts

• Functions with oversized memory configurations

• Long execution durations

• High concurrency usageWith this rule, you can apply automated memory tuning, code optimization, or version cleanup. It also helps you identify functions that should be replaced with step functions or containerized workloads for better cost efficiency.

Why These AWS Optimization Rules Matter

These rules help you fight cloud waste detection proactively. Cloud expenses grow silently—through idle resources, misconfigurations, and forgotten services. By enabling these optimization rules, you ensure:

• Automated detection of cost issues

• Immediate remediation recommendations

• Better governance across multi-account setups

• Consistent cloud hygiene

• Prevention of unexpected billing spikes

In 2025, cost optimization isn’t a one-time project. It’s an ongoing process powered by automation, visibility, and smart governance. Implement these top AWS optimization rules today to save money, streamline operations, and build a cleaner cloud environment for long-term success.

KloudID Can Help

KloudID finds AWS waste, enforces cloud governance, and saves 20–30% on AWS through real-time cost optimization and audit trails. Let us help you cut your CloudWatch and overall AWS costs—starting today.