---
title: "Discussion on \"5 Common AWS Mistakes That Increase Your Cloud Costs (And How to Avoid Them)\" | Hashnode"
description: "Discussion on \"5 Common AWS Mistakes That Increase Your Cloud Costs (And How to Avoid Them)\". Learn how to identify common AWS cost optimization mistakes, reduce unnecessary cloud expenses, and follow best practices to build a more efficient and cost-effective AWS environment."
url: "https://hashnode.com/posts/5-common-aws-mistakes-that-increase-your-cloud-costs-and-how-to-avoid-them/6a6e45e8d935cba0618e6add"
---

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# [5 Common AWS Mistakes That Increase Your Cloud Costs (And How to Avoid Them)](https://blog.gauravkedia.in/5-common-aws-mistakes-that-increase-your-cloud-costs-and-how-to-avoid-them?utm_source=hashnode&utm_medium=feed)

Learn how to identify common AWS cost optimization mistakes, reduce unnecessary cloud expenses, and follow best practices to build a more efficient and cost-effective AWS environment.

Aug 1 · 4 min read · blog.gauravkedia.in  
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## Written by

[Gaurav Kedia](https://hashnode.com/@gauravkedia)

@gauravkedia · Bengaluru, India

  
[View profile](https://hashnode.com/@gauravkedia)

Learning Cloud Engineering Through Real-World Problems

AWS Solutions Architect passionate about AWS, Terraform, DevOps, and cloud automation. Sharing real-world cloud engineering knowledge, troubleshooting guides, infrastructure solutions, and practical DevOps learning.

## Responses 2

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[Puneet Khandelwal](https://hashnode.com/@lifestyle4u)

[Aug 3](https://hashnode.com/posts/5-common-aws-mistakes-that-increase-your-cloud-costs-and-how-to-avoid-them/6a6e45e8d935cba0618e6add/comment/6a70c561f5b24354299c2f0a)

II'm so glad you're sharing your insights with us. Really helpful

[Duko tools](https://hashnode.com/@talha24ramzan)

[Aug 3](https://hashnode.com/posts/5-common-aws-mistakes-that-increase-your-cloud-costs-and-how-to-avoid-them/6a6e45e8d935cba0618e6add/comment/6a7052559279d4d9c477ee1e)

The unattached EBS volume one is the sneakiest of the five, honestly. Terminating an EC2 instance feels like a clean, complete action, but the volume surviving that termination by default (unless "Delete on Termination" was set at launch) means the cost keeps accruing on something that looks, from the billing dashboard, like it belongs to nothing. That's the kind of charge that survives for months precisely because there's no obvious "owner" left to notice it.

NAT Gateway is the one I'd flag as most likely to blindside a smaller team specifically, since it's easy to treat as a one-time networking decision rather than an ongoing cost line. A dev environment needing outbound internet for a few hours a week paying for 24/7 NAT uptime is a good example of infrastructure that was correctly provisioned once and then never revisited, which is really the theme running through all five of these, none of them are configuration mistakes, they're all review mistakes.

The tagging recommendation under EC2 is probably the highest-leverage single practice in the whole list, since it's the thing that makes every other point on this list actually actionable. Untagged idle resources are invisible in a monthly review; tagged-by-owner ones at least have someone to ask "do you still need this" before the bill quietly compounds another month.