Cut your cloud bill: 10 things to switch off.

Picture an online shop in Leeds. A developer once spun up a test server, attached an extra disk, took a few backups and left. A year on, those leftovers are still on the invoice. This is the most common story in cloud billing, and it is easy to fix.

Work through these. Prices below are list prices for AWS's US East (N. Virginia) region, checked in October 2026. Always take a backup or snapshot before you delete anything. Our earlier guide to where your AWS bill leaks covers more AWS-specific ideas.

1. 1. Unattached disksWhen you delete a virtual machine, its disks are not always deleted. Microsoft says that after a VM is deleted you continue to pay for unattached disks. AWS charges for EBS storage by the gigabyte you provision until you release it (gp3 is 0.08 dollars per GB-month), and Google says you are billed for the whole disk until you relinquish it.
2. 2. Old snapshotsBackups pile up. On AWS, snapshot storage is 0.05 dollars per GB-month, while the archive tier is 0.0125 dollars, with a 90-day minimum. Keep a rule: how many snapshots, and for how long?
3. 3. Unused IP addressesAWS charges 0.005 dollars per hour for every public IPv4 address, in use or idle: about 3.65 dollars a month each. On Google Cloud, a reserved static external IP that is not assigned to anything is charged at a higher rate than one in use, listed at 0.01 dollars per hour.
4. 4. Azure VMs that are "stopped"If you shut down an Azure VM from inside its operating system, it stays allocated and is still billed. Only a deallocated VM stops compute billing, and disks and networking can still cost money. Use Stop in the portal or command line.
5. 5. Idle load balancersAWS charges for every hour an Application Load Balancer is running. In its pricing examples for US East the hourly part is 0.0225 dollars, about 16.43 dollars a month, before any traffic.
6. 6. NAT gateways nobody needsAn AWS NAT Gateway costs 0.045 dollars per hour plus 0.045 dollars per GB processed. That is roughly 33 dollars a month per gateway before any data, and each partial hour is billed as a full hour. Check for gateways in test environments.
7. 7. Servers doing nothingLet the tools find them. Azure Advisor suggests shutting down a VM that was not used over the last seven days, using criteria such as low CPU and network use. Google's idle VM recommender looks at CPU and network use over 14 days by default. Both flag candidates: you decide.
8. 8. Storage that should be cheaperOn AWS S3, lifecycle rules can move objects to cheaper storage classes or delete expired ones, though transitions carry request costs. Intelligent-Tiering moves unused objects to lower-cost tiers for a small monitoring fee and has no retrieval charges.
9. 9. Budgets and alertsSet them on every account, and read the next section: they do not stop spending.
10. 10. Tags and labelsWithout them you cannot tell which team or project spent what. See below.

Google Cloud's idle resources recommender also checks disks and external IPs that have not been attached to anything for 15 days. Turn on the equivalent tool in your cloud, and review it monthly.

Tags make bills readable

Every cloud lets you label resources. AWS says tags must be activated before they appear in Cost Explorer, and can take up to 24 hours to show up. Azure says resources do not inherit tags from their resource group or subscription, so you need a policy. Google forwards label information to the billing system so you can break charges down by label. Pick a short set (team, project, environment) and apply it from day one. Do not put sensitive information in tags.

This surprises many people. A budget is an alarm, not a brake.

• Google Cloud says an alerts-only budget does not automatically cap usage or spending. Its default alerts fire at 50%, 90% and 100% of actual spend.
• Azure says that when a budget threshold is reached, resources are not affected and consumption is not stopped. Budgets are evaluated every 24 hours, and cost data takes 8 to 24 hours to arrive.
• AWS Budgets monitoring and notifications are free. The first two action-enabled budgets are free, and each additional one costs 0.10 dollars a day. Budget data refreshes up to three times a day, so there is a delay between spend and notification.

After the cleanup, the next lever is paying less for what you do use by committing to it. Each vendor advertises its own maximum, and they are not like for like:

• AWS Savings Plans: up to 72% compared with on-demand prices.
• Azure Reservations: up to 72% from pay-as-you-go prices, for 1 or 3 years.
• Google Cloud committed use discounts: up to 55% off on-demand prices for most machine types, with up to 70% for some.

These are the top of the range, not what you will get. Commitments lock you in: Microsoft says its savings plan purchases cannot be cancelled or refunded. So clean up first, then commit only to the steady base you are sure you will keep using.

The wider practice has a name: FinOps, defined by the FinOps Foundation as an operational framework and cultural practice that maximizes the business value of technology through collaboration between engineering, finance and business teams. In small teams it simply means someone owns the bill and looks at it every month.

Moving data out of a cloud used to be expensive. That is changing.

• The EU Data Act. Article 29 says that from 12 January 2027, providers of data processing services shall not impose any switching charges on the customer for the switching process. Between 11 January 2024 and 12 January 2027 they may charge reduced switching charges that do not exceed their costs. The Act defines switching charges to include data egress charges for moving to another provider or to on-premises systems. Note that this is about switching, not a ban on all data transfer fees.
• Provider programmes. AWS offers eligible customers free data transfer out to the internet when they move all of their data off AWS, requested through AWS Support, with customers outside the EU given 180 days to complete the move. Google Cloud says customers discontinuing their use of Google Cloud can move their data without network data transfer fees. Microsoft's pricing page says Azure offers free egress for customers leaving Azure, but we could not confirm the detailed terms.

The practical lesson: when you choose a cloud, ask how you would leave, and what it would cost, before you sign.