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AWS Trusted Advisor cost checks are automated recommendations provided by Amazon Web Services that help identify opportunities to reduce cloud spending by detecting unused, underutilized, or misconfigured resources.
These checks are part of AWS Trusted Advisor, a built-in tool that continuously scans your environment and highlights cost saving actions.
At a practical level, this answers a key question: how can you quickly find obvious cost-saving opportunities in your AWS environment?
What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real time guidance across multiple categories:
- Cost optimization
- Performance
- Security
- Fault tolerance
- Service limits
The cost optimization category focuses specifically on reducing unnecessary spend.
What cost checks include
Trusted Advisor cost checks identify common inefficiencies.
Typical checks include:
Idle or underutilized resources
- Low utilization EC2 instances
- Idle load balancers
- Unused Elastic IPs. Also see: What are EC2 Auto Scaling Savings Plans.
Storage inefficiencies
- Underutilized EBS volumes
- Old snapshots
Pricing optimization opportunities
- Recommendations for Reserved Instances or Savings Plans
These checks highlight quick wins.
How AWS Trusted Advisor cost checks work
Trusted Advisor analyzes your usage and configuration data.
At a simplified level:
\text{Potential Savings} = \sum (\text{Unused or Inefficient Resources} \times \text{Cost Rate})
It then provides:
- Identified issues
- Estimated monthly savings
- Recommended actions
This makes it easy to prioritize fixes.
Types of cost checks
Trusted Advisor categorizes findings into:
- Green (No issues): Resources are optimized
- Yellow (Warning): Potential inefficiencies
- Red (Action recommended): Clear cost saving opportunities
This helps prioritize actions.
Trusted Advisor vs Cost Explorer
| Aspect | Trusted Advisor | Cost Explorer |
| Function | Recommendations | Cost analysis |
| Focus | Optimization opportunities | Spending visibility |
| Automation | Provides suggestions | Provides data |
| Outcome | Identifies savings | Explains costs |
They serve complementary roles. Also see: AWS Budgets vs Cost Explorer
Benefits of Trusted Advisor cost checks
Using Trusted Advisor helps:
- Quickly identify obvious waste
- Reduce idle and unused resources
- Improve cost hygiene
- Get estimated savings insights
It is useful for initial optimization.
Limitations of Trusted Advisor
Despite its usefulness, it has limitations:
- Surface-level insights: Focuses mainly on visible waste
- Limited pricing optimization: Does not deeply optimize commitments
- No execution: Provides recommendations but does not implement changes
- Static checks: Not fully adaptive to complex environments
Common challenges with Trusted Advisor
Organizations often face:
- Too many recommendations without prioritization
- Difficulty implementing changes across teams
- Limited visibility into hidden pricing inefficiencies
- Lack of continuous optimization
This reduces realized savings.
Best practices for using Trusted Advisor
To maximize value:
- Regularly review cost check results
- Act quickly on high impact recommendations
- Combine with tagging for better insights
- Use alongside other cost tools
- Automate remediation where possible
These practices improve outcomes.
The role of Trusted Advisor in FinOps
Trusted Advisor primarily supports the “Optimize” phase of FinOps.
It helps:
- Identify waste
- Suggest improvements
- Enable quick cost reductions
However, it does not provide continuous optimization.
Trusted Advisor vs advanced optimization tools
| Aspect | Trusted Advisor | Optimization Platforms |
| Depth of insights | Basic | Advanced |
| Pricing optimization | Limited | Comprehensive |
| Automation | Low | High |
| Execution | Manual | Automated |
The role of automation
Automation is needed to go beyond recommendations.
It enables:
- Continuous monitoring
- Automatic remediation
- Real time optimization
Without automation, savings are limited.
How Usage.ai goes beyond Trusted Advisor
Usage.ai extends beyond basic cost checks by focusing on pricing optimization and execution.
A key limitation of Trusted Advisor is:
- It identifies visible waste
- But misses deeper pricing inefficiencies
Usage.ai enables:
- Continuous optimization of pricing models
- Automated management of Savings Plans and Reserved Instances
- Real time alignment of usage and pricing
- Consistent realization of savings
This ensures organizations capture both visible and hidden savings.
Key Takeaway
AWS Trusted Advisor cost checks are a useful starting point for identifying quick cost-saving opportunities, especially around idle and underutilized resources. However, they primarily address visible inefficiencies and require manual action. Organizations that combine Trusted Advisor with automation and advanced pricing optimization can move from basic recommendations to sustained, large scale cost savings.