AWS cost optimization & audits

Stop overpaying for AWS. We audit. You save.

AWS bills grow quietly. Idle resources, oversized databases, over-provisioned IOPS nobody is using, on-demand pricing on workloads that should be on Savings Plans, and Org-level settings that were never configured: it adds up fast. Modern Logic reviews every account in your AWS Organization, surfaces what’s wasted and what’s mysterious, and delivers a prioritized plan that cuts your bill without slowing your team down.

Glowing fiber-optic strands

Audit strategy

AWS account review and cost optimization consulting.

Read-only account review

We work from a read-only IAM role, with no changes to your account during the audit. You see exactly what we see, and you keep full control of when and how recommendations get applied.

Prioritized recommendations

Not every finding is worth the engineering time to fix. We rank recommendations by estimated monthly savings and implementation effort so you can knock out the high-value, low-risk wins first.

What we find

AWS audit findings we deliver.

  • Unused & idle resources EC2 instances running at near-zero CPU, unattached EBS volumes, idle load balancers, unused Elastic IPs and orphaned snapshots: resources that quietly bill every month while delivering no value.
  • Right-sizing recommendations Oversized EC2 instances and RDS databases are one of the largest sources of waste. We analyze CloudWatch metrics across CPU, memory, network and IOPS to recommend sizes that fit your actual workload.
  • Savings Plans & Reserved Instances We model your steady-state compute and database usage, then recommend the right mix of Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, including term and payment option, without locking into capacity you don’t need.
  • Forgotten & mystery services Every audit turns up expensive line items nobody on the current team can explain. We surface the mystery spend, ask the right questions, and give you a confident plan to retire or right-size each one.
  • Legacy tooling migration Self-hosted CI, always-on build agents and legacy services on big EC2 instances can often move to managed or serverless equivalents, eliminating an entire workload from your bill instead of just trimming it.

Both sides of the bill

Configuration changes and commitment strategy.

Compute (EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda)

Right-sizing, Graviton migration paths, Spot opportunities, and idle cluster cleanup.

Databases (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB)

Instance right-sizing, storage type review, and reserved capacity recommendations.

Storage (S3, EBS, EFS)

Lifecycle policies, storage class transitions, and orphaned volume cleanup.

Networking (NAT, Transfer, CloudFront)

Reducing cross-AZ and NAT Gateway traffic, VPC endpoint opportunities, and CDN offload.

Savings Plans & RIs

Commitment modeling so you buy the right term, family, and payment option for your real usage.

Tagging & cost allocation

Tag policies and cost allocation so finance can finally see which team or product is driving spend.

Hard-won experience

Solving real-world AWS cost problems.

The forgotten environment

A client had a staging environment running production-sized RDS clusters and EC2 fleets after a migration. Nobody owned it, nobody used it, and it was costing thousands a month. We found it, mapped the dependencies, and gave them a safe shutdown plan.

The wrong Savings Plan

More than once we’ve seen teams buy a 3-year All Upfront Compute Savings Plan based on peak usage, then refactor onto Lambda or Graviton and end up paying for commitments they can’t use. We model usage carefully and recommend term and coverage that match how your architecture actually evolves.

NAT Gateway surprises

A client’s NAT Gateway charges had quietly grown to be the single largest line item on their bill, driven by a chatty service pulling from S3 across AZs. A few VPC endpoints and an architectural tweak cut that line item by over 80%.

How we audit

How Modern Logic audits AWS accounts.

We combine AWS-native tooling (Cost Explorer, Compute Optimizer, Trusted Advisor, CUR data and CloudWatch metrics) with hands-on architectural review to build a complete picture of where your money is going.

That lets us…

  • Identify idle, oversized, and underutilized resources across every account and region, not just the obvious ones.
  • Ask the hard questions about every expensive line item: is it still in use, does it need to run 24/7, does anyone own it?
  • Model Savings Plans and Reserved Instance scenarios against your real usage history.
  • Verify Organization-level settings: Savings Plan and RI sharing, consolidated billing, cost allocation tags, and billing alerts.
  • Quantify each recommendation with an estimated monthly and annual savings number.

Built for trust

Secure by default: read-only and auditable.

Read-only IAM access

We operate from a least-privilege, read-only role you create and can revoke at any time.

No data exfiltration

We pull metrics and configuration metadata only, never application data, customer records, or secrets.

Auditable activity

Every API call we make is visible in your CloudTrail. You can see exactly what we looked at and when.

Clear scope & NDA

Fixed scope, fixed deliverables, and an NDA up front. No surprises, no scope creep.

How we work

Our process for AWS audits.

AWS audits have more moving parts than they look: usage patterns, commitment math, architectural constraints, and which workloads can actually be changed. Our process accounts for all of it.

  1. Discovery

    Includes the business context.

    Not just usage data, but what’s growing, what’s being deprecated, and where the team is heading.

  2. Findings

    Ranked by ROI.

    Estimated monthly savings against implementation effort, so the high-value wins are obvious.

  3. Commitments

    Modeled against real history.

    Savings Plans and RI recommendations backed by your actual usage curves, not vendor defaults.

  4. Implementation

    Support if you want it.

    We can hand off the report or roll up our sleeves and help you ship the changes.

By the time we deliver, every recommendation is backed by data, quantified in dollars, and ranked by effort. It’s not a generic checklist.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions about AWS audits.

Straight answers to what people ask us before an AWS audit.

What does an AWS audit from Modern Logic include?

Modern Logic performs a comprehensive review of your AWS account to find unused resources, right-sizing opportunities, and configuration changes that lower your bill. We also model Savings Plans and Reserved Instances against your real usage and deliver a prioritized report with estimated monthly savings for every recommendation.

How much can an AWS audit typically save us?

Savings vary by environment, but for accounts that haven’t had a recent audit, meaningful double-digit percentages of monthly spend are typical — and on under-managed environments the number can be substantially higher. Right-sizing and idle resource cleanup deliver immediate savings, while Savings Plans and Reserved Instances compound the discount over the term of the commitment. We quantify the expected savings per recommendation up front so you can decide what’s worth the engineering time.

How do I find an AWS cost optimization consultant?

Modern Logic is a custom software development firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Twin Cities) with deep AWS experience across compute, data, networking, and serverless workloads. We’ve built and operated production systems on AWS for years, which is why our audits go beyond a Trusted Advisor report — we understand the architectural tradeoffs behind every recommendation.

Who does AWS audits in Minneapolis / Twin Cities?

Modern Logic is headquartered in the Twin Cities and has been building and operating AWS-hosted products for over a decade. Our team handles cloud architecture, cost optimization audits, DevOps, and application development for AWS-based systems — all under one roof.

Should I buy Savings Plans or Reserved Instances?

Compute Savings Plans give the deepest flexibility — they apply to EC2, Fargate, and Lambda across any region, instance family, or OS. EC2 Instance Savings Plans offer a steeper discount but lock you to a specific family and region. Reserved Instances still make sense for RDS, ElastiCache, OpenSearch, and Redshift. We model your usage and recommend the right blend of 1-year vs 3-year terms and No Upfront vs Partial vs All Upfront so you maximize discount without overcommitting.

Do you look across multiple AWS accounts and Organizations?

Yes — we audit every account in your AWS Organization, not just the biggest one. Multi-account environments often hide significant savings at the Org level: Savings Plan and Reserved Instance sharing that was never enabled, consolidated billing left misconfigured, missing cost allocation tags, and absent budget or billing alerts. We surface those as part of every audit so you capture the discounts you’ve already paid for.

Is an AWS audit safe for our production environment?

Yes — we operate exclusively from a read-only IAM role you create and control. We don’t make any changes to your account during the audit. Every API call we make is visible in your CloudTrail. If you later want our help implementing recommendations, that’s a separate, scoped engagement with explicit approvals.

Do I need HIPAA compliance for my AWS workloads?

If your AWS account stores or transmits PHI, HIPAA compliance is required. Modern Logic has built HIPAA-aligned AWS architectures with encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, restricted IAM, and Business Associate Agreements with AWS. Our audits flag any configurations that put compliance at risk and recommend remediations alongside the cost-saving findings.

Why is my AWS bill so high?

AWS pricing has hundreds of dimensions — instance families, regions, storage classes, data transfer paths, commitment terms, and on-demand vs Spot vs Savings Plan rates. Most teams default to on-demand pricing on right-now-sized resources because it’s the safe choice during a build. The bill grows quietly, and nobody has time to revisit it. An audit is the fastest way to align your spend with what you’re actually using.

How is this different from AWS Trusted Advisor or Compute Optimizer?

AWS publishes the Compute Optimizer, Trusted Advisor, and Cost Explorer Rightsizing recommendations — and they’re a useful starting point. But they don’t understand your architectural constraints, your roadmap, or which workloads can actually be changed. We combine the AWS-native tooling with hands-on review and architectural judgement so the recommendations are realistic, not theoretical.

What deliverables do I get from an AWS audit?

Modern Logic delivers a written audit report with every finding quantified in estimated monthly and annual savings, ranked by effort. We walk through the report live with your engineering and finance leads, answer questions, and — if you’d like — help implement the changes. The deliverable is something you can hand to leadership and start acting on the same day.

Let’s talk about your AWS bill.

Whether you’re a startup watching every dollar, a scale-up whose AWS bill just crossed six figures a month, or an enterprise with sprawl across dozens of accounts, we’ve seen the patterns. Tell us what your environment looks like. No commitment, no sales pitch: just a straight conversation about how much you could be saving.

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