A fresh year, a fresh approach to optimization with Amazon Web Services!
As we progress through 2025, it is ideal to ensure that your company’s AWS infrastructure optimizes peak performance and cost-efficiency. That’s why our team updated last year’s comprehensive checklist to assist you in incorporating the latest best practices tailored for AWS success in 2025. By following a strategic approach, you can utilize AWS to drive innovation while reducing costs.
Let’s dive deeper into these new insights!
#1 Conduct an Audit of Your Cost & Usage
Understanding your current AWS usage and expenses is the first step toward optimization. AWS operates on a consumption-based model, meaning your costs are directly related to your resources.
Utilize the AWS Cost Explorer to visualize, filter, and forecast your resource usage and associated costs. If you haven’t enabled it yet, you can do so through the Billing and Cost Management console.
We offer our AWS Resell service clients an in-house developed tool called the Customer Portal. This portal provides a user-friendly yet detailed view of your AWS spending by service, account, or region and your AWS credit balance. Our customers find it beneficial and regularly use it, as it’s more intuitive compared to AWS Cost Explorer and closely resembles AWS Bills.
Partnering with AWS experts like Cloudvisor can help you make informed decisions about your spending and work towards reducing your AWS bills. Enjoy a consistent 3% discount on your spending and benefit from a comprehensive review and optimization of your infrastructure, potentially lowering your costs by up to 40%.
Are you interested? Book a Free Consultation with one of our AWS experts!
#2 Identify Idle Resources and Rightsize Your Instances
After assessing your spending, the next step is optimization. Start by identifying idle resources—those you’re paying for but not fully utilizing. Eliminating or rightsizing these can lead to significant cost reductions. AWS can help you review your running resources and pinpoint underutilized instances.
Rightsizing involves selecting the appropriate instance type and size for your application’s needs. For example, consider switching to one big instance with autoscaling instead of running two bigger instances. Ensure your application can seamlessly handle new instances coming online while terminating the old ones.
Cloudvisor offers an AWS Cost Optimization Review that focuses on your current cost structure and provides insights, advice, and best practices. Book a Free Consultation to learn more!
#3 Leverage Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
To save money, consider utilizing Reserved Instances (RIs) or Savings Plans (SPs) for instances with stable, predictable usage patterns. Both options allow companies to commit to AWS usage over a period in exchange for significant discounts.
RIs offer discounts of up to 72% compared to On-Demand pricing with a one or three-year commitment. They come in three types:
- Standard RIs provide the highest discount and are best for predictable usage patterns.
- Convertible RIs offer flexibility to adjust attributes like instance family, operating system, and tenancy.
- Scheduled RIs allow you to reserve capacity for specific time windows.
On the other hand, SPs require a commitment to a particular hourly spend over one or three years and offer comparable discounts to RIs.
- Compute SPs apply to all eligible AWS compute services, including EC2 Instances, AWS Lambda, and Fargate, providing flexibility across services.
- EC2 Instance SPs apply to specific EC2 instance families within a region.
- SageMaker SPs offer discounted rates for SageMaker workloads.
#4 Update to Latest Generation Instances and Volumes
The latest AWS offerings can lead to significant cost savings and performance improvements. For instance, AWS invests heavily in R&D to enhance the efficiency of its in-house-built AWS Graviton CPUs.
The AWS Graviton4 processors, announced in July 2024, have pushed cost-efficiency boundaries even further. They offer up to 40% cost savings compared to similar Intel-based EC2 instances for the same performance level.
Additionally, consider upgrading from gp2 to gp3 EBS storage. The GP3 volumes are more performant, scalable, and typically 20% cheaper. The best part is that the upgrade is straightforward and requires no downtime.
Find more information here.
#5 Implement Instance Scheduling
Properly scheduling your instances ensures they run when needed, preventing unnecessary costs. Manually stopping and starting cases can lead to errors, so automation is key.
The Instance Scheduler allows you to set predefined schedules for EC2 and RDS resources. For example, if your team works from 9 AM to 5 PM GMT, you can schedule instances to run only during these hours, potentially saving up to 70% on costs.
If the Instance Scheduler seems complex, consider using the AWS Systems Manager Resource Scheduler, which controls resource running times.
#6 Leverage Spot Instances and Spot Fleets for Maximum Discounts
AWS never operates at full capacity, and businesses can take advantage of excess compute power through Spot Instances, which offer discounts of up to 90% compared to On-Demand pricing. However, Spot Instances can be terminated with only a two-minute warning if AWS requires the capacity, making them unreliable for mission-critical applications.
To mitigate this risk, AWS Spot Fleets allow you to:
- Mix spot and on-demand instances to maintain a target capacity.
- Automatically replace terminated cases to ensure continuity.
- Use diversified instance types and Availability Zones to minimize disruptions.
If 24/7 uptime is a priority for your business, consider combining Spot Instances with Reserved Instances or Savings Plans for a cost-effective and reliable setup.
#7 Embrace Serverless for Cost-Efficiency & Scalability
AWS CTO Werner Vogels says: “No server is easier to manage than no server.” He highlights why serverless architectures are becoming the default choice for cost-conscious, scalable cloud solutions.
Rather than managing EC2, RDS, or container-based infrastructure, serverless computing lets you focus purely on business logic without worrying about provisioning or maintenance. The benefits? Reduced operational overhead, automatic scaling, and significant cost savings!
Thinking about going serverless? Here are some key AWS Serverless Services in 2025:
- AWS Lambda – Execute code in response to events without managing servers.
- AWS Fargate – Run containers without provisioning or managing EC2 instances.
- Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 – Scale relational databases automatically.
- Amazon DynamoDB – NoSQL database with automatic scaling and pay-per-use pricing.
- Amazon SQS & SNS – Asynchronous messaging for decoupled architectures.
#8 Following Best Practices for AWS Well-Architected Framework Review
Once optimized costs and performance are optimized, you should audit your AWS setup against AWS best practices. The AWS Well-Architected Framework Review (WAFR) helps businesses align with six key pillars:
Get the most out of a WAFR with Cloudvisor! Our team provides actionable insights and a roadmap for improvement at no cost for eligible businesses. More good news? We offer this service for FREE!
Finally Takeaways: Keep Innovating Your Startup for Better Results
Success with AWS isn’t only a one-time effort. It’s a continuous process of monitoring, optimizing, and staying up-to-date with the latest best practices.
By following this AWS Optimization Checklist for 2025, you can reduce unnecessary cloud spend, improve performance and scalability, and enhance security and reliability.
Need expert guidance? Contact us for a free AWS cost optimization review, and let’s cut your AWS bills together. Cloudvisor is always here to help!
