AWS FinOps Updates

AWS Cloud Cost Optimization News & Updates

Welcome the AWS FinOps & Cloud Cost Optimization updates.

Every week, we’ll update this page with all the news that can  help you do cloud cost optimization in AWS.

 

August 3rd, 2025

A Cheaper Way to Run Your AI Training Jobs!

This is a fantastic update for machine learning teams! AWS Batch now directly supports Amazon SageMaker training jobs.

Before, you might have had to manage these separately. Now, you can use AWS Batch to schedule your SageMaker training jobs in a more cost-effective way.

This lets you take advantage of things like Spot Instances for your training, which can dramatically lower the cost of developing your AI models.

Say Goodbye to Paying for Idle Databases!

Great news for database users! Amazon DocumentDB, which is compatible with MongoDB, is now available in a serverless option.

This is a huge win for FinOps. Instead of paying for a database to be running 24/7, even when it’s not busy, the serverless model means you only pay for the capacity you actually use.

It automatically scales up and down based on your application’s needs, so you’re not wasting money on idle resources.

Don’t Need a Whole GPU? Now You Don’t Have to Buy One!

This is a game-changer for smaller AI workloads! AWS has launched new G6f instances that offer “fractional GPUs”.

This means if your application needs some GPU power but not a full, high-end one, you can now provision just a slice of a GPU.

It’s the perfect way to get the performance you need for things like AI inference or graphics workstations without paying for a whole expensive GPU that you’re not fully using.

25th of July, 2025

Tagging Your Resources Just Got More Powerful!

Good news for governance fans! AWS Tag Policies now support wildcards in their rules.

This is a great update for enforcing consistent tagging across your organization. For example, you can now require that all EC2 instances have a tag key like project-*.

Better tagging means better cost allocation and reporting, which is a huge win for any FinOps team.

More Control Over Your Container Image Tags!

Here’s a handy update for container users! Amazon ECR now lets you create exceptions for tag immutability.

Tag immutability is great because it stops people from accidentally overwriting an important image version, like production.

Now, you can grant specific users or roles permission to override this rule when needed. It’s a nice balance between strong governance and operational flexibility.

See Account Names in Cost Optimization Hub!

This is a fantastic quality-of-life update! Cost Optimization Hub now shows account names next to account IDs.

Before, you might have had to look up what account 123456789012 was. Now, you’ll see “Production-Web-App” right there.

It’s a small change that makes it so much faster and easier to identify where your savings opportunities are and who you need to talk to.

Stop Your EC2 Instances Even Faster!

Here’s an interesting one for operations! You can now choose to skip the OS-level shutdown when you stop or terminate an EC2 instance.

This can make the stop/terminate process much quicker, which is great for faster scaling actions.

While it might save a few fractions of a cent in billing, the real win here is the operational speed, especially in development or test environments.

19th of July, 2025

Your EKS Clusters Can Now Be HUGE!

This is a massive scalability update! Amazon EKS now supports up to 100,000 worker nodes in a single cluster.

From a FinOps perspective, this is huge. It means you can consolidate more workloads into fewer, larger clusters.

This simplifies management and can lead to better resource utilization and cost allocation across a giant fleet of nodes, potentially reducing the overhead of managing lots of small clusters.

Cheaper to Manage Your S3 Objects!

Good news for data management! AWS has significantly reduced the price for adding or changing the metadata on S3 objects that already exist.

Before, you paid the same as a full upload request, but now it’s much cheaper.

This is great if you need to tag or update metadata on large datasets for cost allocation or lifecycle management, as it lowers the cost of keeping your data well-organized.

Save Money on Your S3 Data Lakes!

Another great update for S3 users! S3 Tables now have a feature that helps reduce the cost of data compaction.

Compaction is the process of merging many small files into fewer large ones to keep your queries running fast, but the process itself can be costly.

This update helps lower the operational overhead of maintaining an efficient and cost-effective data lake.

S3 is Getting into the AI Game with Vector Search!

This is a big deal for AI developers! Amazon S3 is now previewing native support for storing and querying vectors.

This is huge for building AI apps that use vector embeddings for things like similarity searches.

From a FinOps angle, building this capability directly into S3 could be much more cost-effective than setting up and paying for a separate, specialized vector database.

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection Just Got Smarter!

Time to trust your alerts more! AWS Cost Anomaly Detection has improved its machine learning models to be more accurate.

It’s now better at understanding your normal spending patterns, including things like seasonal spikes or gradual growth.

This means you’ll get fewer false alarms, so when you do get an alert, you can be more confident that it’s a real cost spike you need to investigate.

AWS Free Tier Gets a Makeover with Credits!

The Free Tier is changing for the better! Instead of specific service limits, the AWS Free Tier will now give you a monthly credit of $75.

This is way more flexible. It allows you to try out a much wider variety of AWS services that fit within that credit amount.

It’s a great change for learning and experimenting with different tools without being locked into specific instance types.

Older Updates

Here are additional FinOps updates we made that involve information about AWS Cloud Cost Optimization updates

FinOps Weekly
FinOps Weekly
Articles: 71