A screenshot of the AWS Cost Leaderboard from July 19th, 2021
Today, Vantage has announced the launch of The AWS Cost Leaderboard, a daily updating website showing a ranked list of the top AWS services that cost customers the most. Data is sourced, anonymized and aggregated from Vantage users with connected AWS accounts for the trailing 30 days of accrued costs. The AWS Cost Leaderboard can be found at https://leaderboard.vantage.sh/.
As the long list of services that AWS offers grows rapidly, it can be difficult to know how much or little these new services are used and how much they contribute to overall costs. While it was obvious that certain services like Amazon EC2, RDS and S3 were big contributors, it was unclear what the the full ranking was for remaining AWS services. At the time of this blog post AWS has over 200 different services, each with their own cost implications. As new AWS services are launched, customers were unaware how much they contributed in terms of magnitude to the overall AWS bill.
Now, https://leaderboard.vantage.sh/ is a publicly available resource available to anyone, whether they are current AWS customers or not, to get an idea about how certain AWS services stack up. While the data is biased towards Vantage users who have connected an AWS account it gives an interesting perspective on overall contributions to what makes up the AWS bill. Additionally, customers can see how their personal or business AWS costs stack up against total, aggregate customer costs.
At Vantage, we believe you deserve the best possible view of your cloud infrastructure costs. The leaderboard is one additional resource in your toolkit for better understanding cloud costs alongside existing tools like https://instances.vantage.sh/ and https://console.vantage.sh/.
Head to the leaderboard to see how services stack up at https://leaderboard.vantage.sh/ or sign up for Vantage at https://console.vantage.sh/
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Today Vantage is launching The AWS Cost Leaderboard: a free community website that shows the top AWS services ranked by costs incurred in aggregated across all Vantage users who have a connected AWS account.
2. How much does this cost?
The leaderboard is provided for free.
3. Why is Vantage launching this?
Vantage believes you deserve the best possible view of your cloud costs. Sometimes, understanding how your infrastructure compares to others can be informative. We believe that the AWS Leaderboard data is generally interesting for the community to see and we think that only good can come from sharing data openly and transparently.
4. I am a Vantage user, is my personal information being shared?
No. No personal data is shared at all in the generation of this data. We compute this data from raw cost data that isn't tied to any specific customer. It is batched, aggregated and sorted with no possibility of user details being leaked. We continue to use best practices when it comes to data security and wouldn't entertain an endeavor like this if it meant any chance of compromising user data. There is no way for anyone to reverse-engineer data from leaderboard.vantage.sh to single users.
5. I am a Vantage user, can I opt out of my data contributing to leaderboard?
Yes. Just email support@vantage.sh with the subject line of "Leaderboard Opt-Out" from the email address associated with your Vantage account.
6. How do I contribute my personal or business AWS costs to the leaderboard?
All connected AWS accounts on Vantage are automatically included in the generation of the leaderboard. To contribute your personal or business AWS costs to the generation of the leaderboard, simple create a Vantage account and connect an AWS account here: https://console.vantage.sh/
7. How accurate is this?
We ultimately do not know. Though as more users sign up and connect AWS accounts to Vantage, the data becomes more accurate every day. This data is sourced from thousands of Vantage users that vary in organizational size from an individual all the way up to publicly traded companies.
We have also spoken with a number of cloud consulting organizations who have told us the leaderboard data lines up with what they have seen in their consulting engagements.
8. I’ve heard of an AWS service that isn’t present on the leaderboard, what’s happening?
There are a few possibilities as to why this is happening:
- It's possible that there isn't a single Vantage user that has incurred costs from a particular service in the last 30 days. If that's the case, it isn't represented on the leaderboard.
- Certain AWS services are batched into others from the AWS side and aren't explicitly shown. For example, EBS is batched in with EC2-Other and not directly known.
- Some AWS services are provided for free and as a result are not represented on the AWS leaderboard as they don't contribute to the bill. For example, IAM is provided free of charge by AWS and doesn't not show up on the leaderboard as a result.
9. How often does this leaderboard update?
Daily at roughly 00:00 (midnight) UTC.
10. Is this data available through the Vantage API?
No, not at this time. Thought if you're interested in this data being present in the API please contact us with the subject line of "Leaderboard API Support" at support@vantage.sh.
11. I’ve noticed typos, spacing or capitalization issues in services listed on the leaderboard - are you aware of this?
Sadly, yes. We are passing through AWS service names as we see them returned from AWS APIs and sometimes they contain typos or spacing inconsistencies. As a result, we aren't putting effort into correcting or changing them.
12. I know that Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a top cost center - why isn’t it represented on this leaderboard?
Amazon EBS is batched into the cost category of "EC2-Other"
13. What is EC2-Other?
EC2-Other is a cost category that contains costs related to EBS Volumes, data transit costs, unused IP addresses amongst other things.
14. May I replicate this data somewhere else?
We ask that if you do, you always cite and link back to https://leaderboard.vantage.sh/.
15. May I reference this data in a publication?
Yes, but please cite and link back to https://leaderboard.vantage.sh/.
16. Where can I go to discuss this data?
We have a Slack Community that is open to anyone you're welcome to join - we expect some chatter to happen there but you're welcome to discuss this actively on Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media outlets.
17. What are these links on certain AWS services going to?
Vantage is looking to launch a handbook of general concepts and best practices as it relates to AWS costs. As we finalize content we will publish it and link it from the Vantage console as well as the leaderboard.</p
