Why it matters
AWS offers many separate tools for cost optimization (Compute Optimizer, Savings Plans, RI recommendations, idle resource checks, and more). Without a single view, it’s hard to see where the biggest savings are and whether changes are actually improving overall efficiency.
Cost Optimization Hub consolidates recommendations and provides a cost efficiency metric so teams can track progress over time and focus on the highest-impact changes first.
What Cost Optimization Hub does
Cost Optimization Hub:
- Aggregates recommendations across supported services and Regions into one place
- Deduplicates overlapping savings (for example, stopping idle instances vs. buying Savings Plans)
- Quantifies estimated monthly savings that account for your actual pricing and discounts
- Provides a cost efficiency score so you can benchmark and measure improvement
It pulls in recommendations for rightsizing, idle resource cleanup, and commitment-based discounts (Savings Plans and Reserved Instances) across services like EC2, RDS, Lambda, DynamoDB, Redshift, and more.
See the official documentation for supported resources:
Cost efficiency metric
Cost Optimization Hub exposes a cost efficiency metric that measures how effectively cloud resources are being optimized.
At a high level:
- Potential Savings – the deduplicated estimated cost reductions from all active recommendations
- Total Optimizable Spend – the portion of your spend that can be optimized (for supported services)
- Cost efficiency – a percentage that improves as recommendations are implemented and drops when inefficient resources are added
You can view cost efficiency:
- For a single account or across an entire organization
- Per Region, to spot where optimization efforts should focus
- Over time, to see whether optimization work is actually improving efficiency
For more detail on how the metric is calculated, see:
How to use it
- Open Billing and Cost Management → Cost Optimization Hub in the AWS console to access the dashboard
- Start at the Hub to identify and rank the largest savings opportunities
- Drill into individual recommendations (for example, via Compute Optimizer or service consoles) to validate and plan changes
- Track the cost efficiency score over time as a simple KPI for optimization work
- Use filters (by account, Region, service, or recommendation type) to assign ownership to specific teams
Cost Optimization Hub is most effective when combined with:
- Compute Optimizer for detailed rightsizing guidance
- Budgets and Cost Anomaly Detection to guard against regressions
- Trusted Advisor for broader best-practice checks beyond pure cost