What Is an AWS Savings Plan?

AWS Savings Plans, introduced in 2019, offer significant discounts on cloud computing costs by committing to specific usage levels, potentially providing up to 72% savings on EC2 instances. The savings depend on factors such as the term of commitment (1 or 3 years), the prepayment amount (No Upfront, Partial Upfront, or All Upfront), and the chosen compute options (such as EC2, Lambda, and Fargate). Customers often prefer the flexibility of Compute Savings Plans, which allow changes in instance size or region, unlike Reserved Instances. To maximize savings and manage AWS Savings Plans effectively, third-party solutions like Vantage offer tools for tracking, optimizing, and automating savings plan purchases, providing insights into financial commitments and helping align them with organizational needs.