Simple Cloud Waste Scanner That Doesn't Require a FinOps Team

saas real project •• multiple requests

An HN developer built their own cloud waste tool after finding existing options either expensive SaaS or buried in complex dashboards. Small teams spending $1K-$10K/month on AWS waste an average 28% of spend but can't justify Vantage or CloudHealth subscriptions. Demand is for a one-click scan that finds idle VMs, unattached volumes, and oversized instances without onboarding overhead.

builder note

Don't build another dashboard. Build a CLI or GitHub Action that runs in CI and posts a Slack message: 'You have 3 idle EC2 instances costing $847/month.' The insight delivery mechanism matters more than the detection logic, which is largely commodity at this point.

landscape (4 existing solutions)

Cloud cost tools are either free-but-limited (AWS native), expensive-and-complex (CloudHealth, Vantage), or early-stage (SpendZero). Nobody has nailed the 'run one command, get a waste report' experience for teams under $10K/month cloud spend.

SpendZero Free initial scan is promising but limited to AWS/GCP. No Azure support. Still early-stage with limited community.

Cloudchipr Starts at $38/month. Good feature set but still requires dashboard navigation and setup time that small teams resist.

AWS Trusted Advisor Free tier is very limited. Full recommendations require Business Support ($100/mo minimum). AWS-only. Buried in the console.

Vantage Excellent tool but priced for mid-market ($5K+ monthly cloud spend). Overkill dashboard for a 3-person startup.

sources (2)

hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838553 "frustrated with how hard it is to find obvious cloud waste" 2026-01-31

other https://cloudchipr.com/blog/cloudhealth-alternatives "CloudHealth can be expensive for smaller organizations" 2026-02-15

cloud-costsFinOpsAWSdevopscost-optimization