Why does AWS make it so easy to waste money on S3?
Hey everyone,
I’ve spent a lot of time working with AWS infrastructure, and one thing that always annoys me is how sneaky all the costs are.
AWS Cost Explorer will show you that you spent money, but it won't easily tell you why. Things like broken 10-day-old file uploads sitting in limbo, or versioned buckets piling up old file copies because no one set an expiration rule, quietly eat your budget without triggering any alerts.
I originally wrote a small script to find these "ghost" costs on my own setup. It saved me money immediately, so I decided to turn it into a hosted tool called GhostTrace (S3 Passport).
The idea is simple:
Zero friction: No installing agents or giving away write access.
100% read-only: Uses AWS STS AssumeRole so it’s completely safe.
Fast answers: Gives you an instant assessment of hidden waste and governance gaps in 30 seconds.
We’re putting the final touches on it before a bigger public launch, but I wanted to post here first to gather some early feedback and ideas.
Two quick questions for you all:
What’s the weirdest or most frustrating hidden AWS cost leak you’ve ever stumbled across?
If we add other services next, which one hurts your wallet the most? (Orphaned EBS volumes, idle RDS instances, or unattached IPs?)
Would love to hear your thoughts or any specific edge cases you think we should look out for!
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