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X-Account RI Sharing

X-Account RI Sharing is an AWS feature that allows Reserved Instance discounts to apply automatically across multiple linked accounts within an AWS Organization, rather than staying locked to the account that purchased them.

How It Works

When a company uses AWS Organizations to group multiple AWS accounts under a single management (payer) account, Reserved Instance discounts from any member account can be shared across all other accounts in the organization. AWS applies the discount automatically wherever the matching instance usage is found, regardless of which account runs the workload. No manual reassignment is needed. The feature is enabled by default but can be turned off at the individual account level if a team wants to keep their commitments private to their own account.

Why It Matters for Cloud Cost

Without X-Account RI Sharing, Reserved Instances purchased in one account sit idle if that account’s usage drops, while another account continues paying full on-demand rates for the same instance type. Sharing removes that inefficiency. Finance and platform teams gain higher commitment utilization across the entire organization without needing to consolidate workloads into a single account. The result is better discount coverage and lower overall cloud spend, with no structural changes to the account hierarchy required.

Usage AI manages Reserved Instance coverage across your organization through Usage Flex Reserved Instances, covering RDS, ElastiCache, OpenSearch, Redshift, and DynamoDB, with savings of 30 to 40% versus on-demand and $0 upfront.

See how Usage AI saves 30 to 50% on AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Related Terms

Cloud Billing

Cloud billing is the process by which cloud providers measure your resource consumption, apply the appropriate pricing rates, and generate charges on a recurring basis.

Cloud Rate Optimization

Cloud rate optimization secures the best available pricing on cloud resources through commitment-based discounts, negotiated agreements, and automated management of Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.

xSP (Cross-Service Provider)

xSP is a term for commitment-based discount programs that apply spending credits or discounts across multiple services or providers, rather than locking savings to a single service type.