I built a service to help companies reduce AWS spend by 50%
Hey HN: Kaveh here, the founder of https://www.usage.ai/ We help companies drive down AWS EC2 spend. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. DevOps and Software Engineers end up spending time managing costs rather than focusing on business problems. Previous to founding Usage, I worked on high-performance computing research at JP Morgan Chase and as a software engineer at a number of smaller startups. Here's how it works: We are typically brought in by a DevOps manager to cut AWS EC2 costs. The app is entirely self-service and the savings are generated automatically,…
In plain words
Usage.ai is a self-service platform that helps companies reduce their AWS EC2 spending automatically. Designed for DevOps managers and software engineers, it eliminates manual cost management by purchasing Reserved Instances on clients' behalf—a billing-layer change requiring no code modifications or performance adjustments. The service typically achieves 50% cost reductions with minimal setup time, freeing engineering teams to focus on business priorities rather than cloud infrastructure optimization.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN: Kaveh here, the founder of https://www.usage.ai/ We help companies drive down AWS EC2 spend. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. DevOps and Software Engineers end up spending time managing costs rather than focusing on business problems. Previous to founding Usage, I worked on high-performance computing research at JP Morgan Chase and as a software engineer at a number of smaller startups. Here's how it works: We are typically brought in by a DevOps manager to cut AWS EC2 costs. The app is entirely self-service and the savings are generated automatically, typically we do this live on a call. On average, we reduce AWS EC2 spend by 50% for 5 minutes of work. To reduce by 50%+, we don't touch the instances, require any code change, or change the performance of your instances. We buy Reserved Instances on your behalf (a billing layer change only) and bundle them with guaranteed buyback. So you get the steep 57% savings of 3-year no-upfront RIs with none of the commitment (you can sell them back to us anytime after 30 days). We make money off of a 20% Savings Fee. Happy to chat directly [email protected] Have you experienced any issues with managing your company or organization's AWS expenses? We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas!
Does the same job
all alternatives →- IBI built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills2020 · ▲73
Hey HN: I'm Kaveh, the founder of Usage (https://www.usage.ai/) We help companies drive down AWS costs. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. Stakeholders, especially engineers, are required to spend unnecessary time manually finding underutilized or overly expensive EC2s. We believe the optimization process should be done automatically through a series of sophisticated algorithms. At the moment, there are over 70,000 AWS EC2 prices - doing that manually just won't scale at most organizations. My background is in software engineering. Previous to founding Usage, I…
- U2Usage 2.0 – Cut AWS Spend by 57% in 5 Minutes2023 · ▲135
Hey HN: Kaveh here, the founder of https://www.usage.ai/ We launched on Hacker News for the first time early last year, and we've made a lot of progress since then. We've saved tens of millions of dollars for companies, and we are even more excited to announce the launch of a new product: insured reservations for RDS! We worked closely with AWS on this feature and are excited to finally make it generally available. We help companies drive down AWS EC2 & RDS spend. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. DevOps and Software Engineers end up spending time managing costs…
- WBWe built a product to help companies reduce AWS/GCP/Azure spend by 50%2024 · ▲5
Hey HN: Kaveh here, founder of https://www.usage.ai/ We help companies drive down AWS, GCP, and Azure spend. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. DevOps and Software Engineers end up spending time managing costs rather than focusing on business problems. I have been building Usage AI for almost 4 years now (4 year anniversary in 1 month from now!) with an incredible group of founding people. We started as a product just to help lower AWS EC2 costs, and now we do all major AWS services (such as RDS, OpenSearch, ElastiCache, and Redshift with more on the way) and other…
- IBI built a service to help companies save 35%+ on their AWS bills2020 · ▲25
Hi everyone, I've been working on a side project over quarantine called Usage.ai and I finally feel comfortable enough to launch it. We're a service that plugs directly into AWS, automatically finds savings, and applies those savings at the press of a confirmation button all without ever needing to go to an AWS console. I'd love to get HN's thoughts on it! Demo: https://www.loom.com/share/2a6f1c8e4c214914a1cdd88c6fdec4ac Link: https://www.usage.ai/
- UCUsage, Cut your AWS Bill by 50%+ in 5 Minutes2022 · ▲43
Hi HN community, [Direct Link: www.usage.ai] I’m Kaveh, founder and CEO of Usage, and am excited to show you Usage, an app that helps you slash your AWS EC2 bill by 50% in ~5min by trading reservations. As of today, Usage is in General Availability and any AWS user can use it. It works by creating a limited-access IAM role (ReadOnly + Ability to Manage Reservations) into your AWS account(s). The AWS console interface has made it hard for companies to optimize their AWS spend. After years of working for different companies that use AWS, I still find it difficult to understand how much money…
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