gp3 ~$0.08/GB-mo; a 500 GB orphan is ~$40/mo forever

Unattached EBS volumes and gp2 waste

EBS volumes bill every hour whether or not they are attached to anything. Orphaned volumes, forgotten snapshots, and gp2 you never moved to gp3 add up to steady, invisible spend.

Why the waste happens

  • Volumes are created with DeleteOnTermination disabled, so they survive after their instance is terminated.
  • Detaching a volume to debug or migrate leaves it in the available state, still billing, indefinitely.
  • Snapshots accumulate with no lifecycle policy, each charging for the storage it holds.
  • gp2 volumes are never migrated to gp3, which is about 20 percent cheaper at the same or better baseline performance.

How to spot it

  • Volumes in the available (unattached) state, especially large ones.
  • Snapshots older than your real recovery window, or snapshots of volumes that no longer exist.
  • gp2 volumes that could be gp3, and io1 volumes that could be io2.
  • Instances launched without DeleteOnTermination, which will orphan their volumes later.

The fix

  • Snapshot any unattached volume you might need, then delete it; the snapshot costs a fraction of the live volume.
  • Migrate gp2 to gp3 (a live modify-volume change) for an immediate ~20 percent storage discount.
  • Set a lifecycle policy to expire old snapshots, and delete snapshots whose source volume is gone.
  • Enable DeleteOnTermination on new volumes so they are cleaned up with their instance.

Find every EBS volume issue in one scan

Cloud Cost Analyzer flags unattached volumes, gp2 volumes that should be gp3, old and orphaned snapshots, and magnetic or io1 volumes worth migrating, each priced so you can see the monthly saving before you touch anything.

$ cca scan --provider aws

Read-only, runs in about 5 minutes. Free tier, no credit card.

Read the deep dive: Cut your EBS bill ~20% by migrating gp2 to gp3 →

EBS volume cost FAQ

Do unattached EBS volumes still cost money?+

Yes. An EBS volume is billed per GB per hour for as long as it exists, whether or not it is attached to an instance. An unattached 500 GB gp3 volume costs about $40 per month indefinitely until you delete it.

Is it safe to migrate gp2 to gp3?+

Yes. gp3 is a live modify-volume operation with no downtime and no data migration. gp3 is about 20 percent cheaper than gp2 and provides a higher baseline of throughput and IOPS.

Should I delete old EBS snapshots?+

Delete snapshots older than your recovery requirement, and any whose source volume no longer exists. A lifecycle policy automates this. Keep only what your restore and compliance needs actually require.

More cost guides

NAT Gateways

Idle gateways and avoidable data-processing charges, one per AZ.

RDS databases

Over-provisioned classes, non-Graviton, and Multi-AZ on non-prod.

Load balancers

ALBs and NLBs with no targets or near-zero traffic, still billing.

S3 storage

Cold data sitting in Standard with no lifecycle policy.

EC2 instances

Idle and oversized instances, previous-gen types, 24/7 dev boxes.

Aurora

Oversized instances, Serverless v1, and I/O-Optimized breakevens.

ElastiCache

Idle cache clusters and oversized, non-Graviton nodes.

CloudFront

Idle distributions and price classes wider than your audience.

DynamoDB

On-demand billing on steady workloads, and unused indexes.

Lambda

Over-provisioned memory and x86 functions that could be arm64.

See what you are overpaying for

Point a read-only CLI at your account and get a ranked fix list with dollar amounts. Free tier, no credit card.