Savings Plans & Reserved Instance Advisor
Enterprise Feature: The Savings Advisor (RI/SP Recommendations) is available exclusively for Enterprise plan customers. Contact us to upgrade your plan.
The Commitment Advisor is a powerful cost optimization feature that analyzes your AWS compute usage patterns across all eligible services and provides actionable recommendations for Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
Overview
Savings Plans and Reserved Instances offer significant discounts (30-70%) compared to On-Demand pricing. The Commitment Advisor helps you:
- Identify optimization opportunities - Analyze your current compute spend to find the best commitment options
- Monitor existing commitments - Track utilization of your current Savings Plans and Reserved Instances
- Detect coverage gaps - Find areas where you're paying On-Demand rates unnecessarily
- Compare options - Evaluate Compute SP vs EC2 Instance SP vs SageMaker SP vs Reserved Instances
- Multi-service analysis - Coverage breakdown by service (EC2, Lambda, Fargate, SageMaker)
Covered Services
Per AWS Savings Plans documentation:
| Savings Plan Type | Covered Services | Flexibility |
|---|---|---|
| Compute Savings Plans | Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate | High - any region, family, size, OS |
| EC2 Instance Savings Plans | Amazon EC2 only | Medium - specific family in a region |
| SageMaker Savings Plans | Amazon SageMaker AI | Medium - any region, family, size |
Compute Savings Plans
Most flexible option, automatically applies to:
- Amazon EC2 - All instance types across all regions
- AWS Lambda - Function compute time
- AWS Fargate - ECS and EKS task compute
EC2 Instance Savings Plans
Higher discount than Compute SP, but limited to:
- Specific instance family (e.g., m5, c6i)
- Specific region
- Any size, OS, or tenancy within that family
SageMaker Savings Plans
Dedicated savings for machine learning workloads:
- SageMaker notebook instances
- SageMaker training jobs
- SageMaker inference endpoints
- SageMaker Studio
Finding Types
1. Underutilization Alerts
When you have existing Savings Plans or Reserved Instances that are not fully utilized, the advisor will flag these as underutilization issues.
| Severity | Utilization % | Action |
|---|---|---|
| High | < 70% | Immediate review recommended |
| Medium | 70-90% | Consider optimization |
| Optimal | ≥ 90% | Commitment well-utilized |
Recommendations for underutilized commitments:
- Review if workloads have been moved or terminated
- Consider selling unused RIs in the RI Marketplace
- Adjust future commitment purchases based on actual usage
2. Coverage Gap Analysis
The advisor analyzes what percentage of your compute spend is covered by commitments vs paid at On-Demand rates.
| Coverage % | Status | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| < 30% | Low | High savings opportunity |
| 30-50% | Moderate | Consider additional commitments |
| 50-80% | Good | Review specific workloads |
| > 80% | Excellent | Well-optimized |
3. Service-Specific Coverage Gaps
The advisor breaks down coverage by individual service to identify which compute types need attention:
| Service | Low Coverage Impact |
|---|---|
| Amazon EC2 | Consider Compute SP or EC2 Instance SP |
| AWS Lambda | Consider Compute Savings Plan |
| AWS Fargate | Consider Compute Savings Plan |
| Amazon SageMaker | Consider SageMaker Savings Plan |
Example finding:
"Your AWS Lambda spend ($2,500/month) has only 15% commitment coverage. Consider a Compute Savings Plan to save ~30% ($750/month)."
4. Purchase Recommendations
Based on your usage patterns, the advisor provides specific purchase recommendations:
Savings Plans Recommendations:
- Compute Savings Plans - Most flexible, applies to EC2, Lambda, and Fargate across any region
- EC2 Instance Savings Plans - Higher discount, applies to specific instance family in a region
- SageMaker Savings Plans - Up to 64% savings on SageMaker ML instances
Reserved Instance Recommendations:
- Standard RIs - Highest discount, can be sold in marketplace
- Convertible RIs - Flexible to exchange for different instance types
Commitment Comparison
| Feature | Compute SP | EC2 Instance SP | SageMaker SP | Standard RI | Convertible RI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discount | 20-40% | 30-50% | 20-64% | 35-60% | 25-55% |
| Flexibility | High | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
| Services | EC2, Lambda, Fargate | EC2 only | SageMaker | EC2, RDS, etc. | EC2, RDS, etc. |
| Region Lock | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Instance Lock | No | Family only | No | Type specific | Exchangeable |
| Resellable | No | No | No | Yes | No |
Term and Payment Options
Term Length
- 1-Year Term - Lower commitment, smaller discount
- 3-Year Term - Higher discount, longer commitment
Payment Options
| Payment Option | Upfront Cost | Discount Level |
|---|---|---|
| No Upfront | $0 | Lowest |
| Partial Upfront | 50% | Medium |
| All Upfront | 100% | Highest |
AWS Organizations Support
In enterprise environments, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances are typically purchased at the management (payer) account level and shared across member accounts in the organization.
How it Works
The Commitment Advisor automatically detects your AWS Organizations structure:
| Account Type | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Management Account | Full RI/SP recommendations (org-wide) |
| Member Account | Utilization monitoring + info about management account |
| Standalone Account | Full recommendations (no org) |
Management Account Detection
The scanner uses the organizations:DescribeOrganization API to determine:
- Whether the account is part of an AWS Organization
- If the current account is the management (payer) account
- The management account ID (for member accounts)
Best Practice
For comprehensive RI/SP recommendations in an organization:
- Connect the management account to unusd.cloud for full purchase recommendations
- Connect member accounts for utilization monitoring and resource-level insights
- The management account will receive org-wide recommendations
- Member accounts will show a note directing to the management account for purchases
Dashboard Indicators
Accounts in the dashboard display an organization badge:
- 🏢 Management - This is the payer account (RI/SP purchases here)
- 🔗 Member - Part of an organization (shows management account ID)
- 📦 Standalone - Not part of an organization
Required IAM Permissions
The Commitment Advisor requires the following AWS permissions:
# AWS Organizations (for management account detection)
- organizations:DescribeOrganization
# Cost Explorer (for RI/SP analysis)
- ce:GetSavingsPlansCoverage
- ce:GetSavingsPlansPurchaseRecommendation
- ce:GetSavingsPlansUtilization
- ce:GetSavingsPlansUtilizationDetails
- ce:GetReservationCoverage
- ce:GetReservationPurchaseRecommendation
- ce:GetReservationUtilization
These permissions are included in the unusd.cloud spoke role template (v1.2+).
Best Practices
- Start with Compute Savings Plans - They cover EC2, Lambda, AND Fargate - maximum flexibility
- Analyze usage patterns first - Ensure your workloads are stable before making long-term commitments
- Consider workload flexibility - If you frequently change instance types or use serverless, prefer Compute SPs
- Separate SageMaker commitments - SageMaker has its own Savings Plan type for ML workloads
- Monitor regularly - Review utilization monthly to catch any changes in usage patterns
- Plan for growth - Don't over-commit; leave room for on-demand capacity
- Review by service - Use the service-level coverage breakdown to find which services need attention
Break-Even Analysis
For upfront payment options, the advisor calculates when you'll break even:
Example: If you pay $12,000 upfront and save $1,500/month, you break even in 8 months.
Report Integration
Commitment Advisor findings appear in:
- Email Reports - Dedicated section for commitment recommendations
- Slack Notifications - Summary of findings and potential savings
- MS Teams Notifications - Quick overview with key recommendations
- Dashboard - Interactive view of all commitment opportunities
Limitations
- Enterprise Plan Required - This feature is available exclusively for Enterprise plan customers
- Lookback Period - Recommendations are based on the past 30 days of usage
- Organization-Wide Recommendations - Full RI/SP purchase recommendations are only available on management accounts. Member accounts see utilization data only.
- Spot Instances - Savings from Spot are calculated separately
- Cost Explorer Availability - Requires Cost Explorer to be enabled in your account
- New Organizations -
organizations:DescribeOrganizationpermission required for org detection