aws-cost-audit

An open-source CLI tool that audits your AWS account for common cost waste patterns and produces actionable findings.

Built by Forrict — AWS cloud consultancy in the Netherlands.

What it does

aws-cost-audit scans your AWS account for 15 common cost waste patterns and produces a table of findings with recommendations. Each check is self-contained and gracefully handles missing permissions.

aws-cost-audit 0.1.0 — running checks...

  [PASS] Unused EC2 Instances
  [FAIL] Unattached EBS Volumes
  [WARN] Old EBS Snapshots
  [PASS] Idle Load Balancers
  [FAIL] Unattached Elastic IPs
  ...

Check Name                       Status   Finding                                            Recommendation
-------------------------------  -------  -------------------------------------------------  ---------------------------------------------------
Unused EC2 Instances             PASS     No running EC2 instances found.                    No action required.
Unattached EBS Volumes           FAIL     3 unattached volume(s) totalling 300 GiB: ...      Delete volumes that are no longer needed.
Old EBS Snapshots                WARN     12 snapshot(s) older than 90 days (1200 GiB)...    Implement a lifecycle policy using AWS DLM.
...

Summary: 8 PASS | 4 WARN | 2 FAIL | 1 INFO

Checks (15)

Installation

Pre-built binaries

Download the latest binary for your platform from GitHub Releases:

Linux (amd64)

curl -Lo aws-cost-audit https://github.com/Forrict/aws-cost-audit/releases/latest/download/aws-cost-audit-linux-amd64
chmod +x aws-cost-audit
sudo mv aws-cost-audit /usr/local/bin/

macOS (Apple Silicon)

curl -Lo aws-cost-audit https://github.com/Forrict/aws-cost-audit/releases/latest/download/aws-cost-audit-macos-arm64
chmod +x aws-cost-audit
sudo mv aws-cost-audit /usr/local/bin/

Windows (amd64)

Download aws-cost-audit-windows-amd64.exe from the releases page and add it to your PATH.

pip (Python 3.9+)

pip install aws-cost-audit

From source

git clone https://github.com/Forrict/aws-cost-audit.git
cd aws-cost-audit
pip install .

Usage

# Run all checks
aws-cost-audit

# Run with verbose per-resource output
aws-cost-audit --verbose

# Run specific checks only
aws-cost-audit --checks ebs_unattached eip_unattached

# List available checks
aws-cost-audit --list-checks

# Output as JSON (writes to cost-report.json by default)
aws-cost-audit --output json

# Output as CSV (writes to cost-report.csv by default)
aws-cost-audit --output csv

# Write report to a specific file
aws-cost-audit --output json --output-file my-report.json

# Disable color output (useful for CI/logging)
aws-cost-audit --no-color

# Exit code: 0 = all pass, 1 = warnings or failures found
aws-cost-audit && echo "All clean!" || echo "Issues found."

Required IAM Permissions

The tool uses read-only AWS API calls. Attach these permissions to the IAM user or role running the tool:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
        "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
        "ec2:DescribeAddresses",
        "ec2:DescribeNatGateways",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "ce:GetSavingsPlansCoverage",
        "ce:GetReservationCoverage",
        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
        "s3:GetBucketLifecycleConfiguration",
        "s3:GetBucketTagging",
        "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
        "rds:DescribeDBInstances",
        "lambda:ListFunctions",
        "dynamodb:ListTables",
        "dynamodb:DescribeTable",
        "sts:GetCallerIdentity"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

AWS Credentials

The tool uses the default AWS credential chain (environment variables, ~/.aws/credentials, IAM role, etc.).

# Using environment variables
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=eu-west-1
aws-cost-audit

# Using a named profile
AWS_PROFILE=my-sandbox aws-cost-audit

# Using AWS SSO
aws sso login --profile my-profile
AWS_PROFILE=my-profile aws-cost-audit

Check Descriptions

Detailed descriptions of each check (what it checks, why it matters, typical savings) are in check_descriptions.yaml.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Each check lives in aws_cost_audit/checks/ as a self-contained module with a single run() -> CheckResult function.