Each pattern includes the fix and average $/month savings. Compiled from real audit data. No signup. No vendor sponsorship. No affiliate links.
#1
Snowflake auto-suspend padding
avg $400 – $1,500 / mo waste
The wasteQueries run in 30s but the warehouse stays running 60s+ after. The padding is billed at full per-second warehouse rate.
The fixDrop auto-suspend to 0 or 30s for short-query warehouses. Reserve longer auto-suspend only for warehouses with high cold-start cost on dashboards.
Open the Snowflake Query Cost Calculator →
#2
AWS NAT Gateway per-AZ idle
avg $32 – $65 / mo baseline
The wasteEach NAT Gateway in each AZ costs $32.85/mo even at zero traffic. Three-AZ HA = $98/mo before a single byte moves.
The fixSingle-AZ for non-production environments, or a NAT Instance ($6.72/mo) for workloads under 500GB/mo. Reserve multi-AZ NAT Gateway for production only.
Open the AWS NAT Gateway Cost Calculator →
#3
Databricks All-Purpose vs Jobs Compute (5.7× markup)
avg $300 – $2,000 / mo waste
The wasteAll-Purpose Compute at $0.40/DBU is 5.7× Jobs Compute at $0.07/DBU for the same workload. Scheduled jobs left on All-Purpose clusters bleed the difference every run.
The fixMigrate scheduled workloads to Jobs Compute clusters. Keep All-Purpose for interactive notebooks only. Audit the cluster picker in every scheduled job before sign-off.
Open the Databricks DBU Cost Calculator →
#4
Datadog APM at $31/host
avg $200 – $3,000 / mo waste
The wasteAPM costs +$31/host on Pro tier ($40 on Enterprise) — most teams assume it's bundled with infrastructure monitoring. Range scales with fleet size.
The fixEnable APM only on production hosts that actually need it. Use the AlwaysOn Profiling toggle for cost-aware sampling, and turn off APM on staging/dev hosts entirely.
Open the Datadog Cost Calculator →
#5
S3 internet egress vs CloudFront
avg $80 – $700 / mo on first 10TB
The wasteS3 → internet is $0.09/GB tiered. S3 → CloudFront is free. Serving user assets direct from S3 means paying for traffic that has a zero-rate path available.
The fixServe user-facing assets through CloudFront, not direct S3 URLs. Add CloudFront as an origin in front of any public S3 bucket serving more than ~100GB/mo to users.
Open the S3 Egress Cost Calculator →
#6
Claude Sonnet 4 vs Opus 4.1 on same task
avg 5× cost gap
The wasteOpus at $15 in / $75 out per MTok vs Sonnet at $3 / $15. Same JSON-shape tasks rarely need Opus, but get routed there by default in many SDK setups.
The fixRoute narrow tasks (classification, extraction, JSON shapes) to Sonnet or Haiku. Reserve Opus for genuinely hard multi-step reasoning. Build a router that picks model tier per task type rather than per app.
Open the Claude API Cost Calculator →
#7
RAG embeddings forgotten line item
avg 30–50% of total RAG cost
The wasteMost RAG cost analyses only count generation tokens. Embeddings (re-indexing, per-query embedding) add another 30–50% on top, and the line item is often missing from the budget projection entirely.
The fixCache embeddings aggressively, batch re-index jobs instead of streaming, and pick the cheaper embedding model when retrieval quality allows (text-embedding-3-small vs -large is a 6× gap).
Open the RAG Pipeline Cost Calculator →
#8
BigQuery On-Demand vs Slot crossover at 1,401 TB
decision-fork waste
The wasteTeams stay on On-Demand past 1,401 TB scanned/mo (the 300-slot Standard break-even). Every TB above the crossover is overspend that compounds month after month.
The fixMonitor monthly scanned-TB as a leading indicator. Flip to Slot Reservations once the trend confirms sustained >1,400 TB for two months. Start with Standard edition; only move to Enterprise/Enterprise Plus if you need the features they unlock.
Open the BigQuery Slot Cost Calculator →
#9
Supabase Pro tier hidden caps
avg $100 – $500 / mo overage surprise
The wastePro at $25/mo bundles 100GB egress, 100K MAU, and 500K functions. Most builders find out the caps only after the first overage email arrives.
The fixMonitor each capped dimension proactively from the project dashboard. Switch to Team at $599/mo only when sustained overage charges exceed $100/mo on the same line item for two consecutive months.
Open the Supabase Pricing Calculator →
#10
CloudFront vs Cloudflare bandwidth model
avg $40 – $300 / mo on hi-traffic
The wasteCloudFront tiered bandwidth ($0.085/GB first 10TB) vs Cloudflare's free bandwidth on all plans. Two CDNs price on completely different dimensions; the gap is invisible until you model both.
The fixIf traffic is mostly user-facing static assets and you don't need Lambda@Edge, Cloudflare Free covers it. CloudFront wins only when fine-grained edge compute or deep AWS-account integration is required.
Open the CloudFront vs Cloudflare Cost Comparison →
Want me to run YOUR usage CSV through all 32 patterns?
LLM Bill Triage — $299 Deep Report
Upload your actual provider usage CSV (no API keys required). I run the same 32-rule library against it and ship a PDF with top 5 cost drivers, prompt-bloat heatmap, model-routing recommendations, and projected $/mo savings. Delivered within 24 hours.
See the $299 Deep Report →
Money-back guarantee: if total identified monthly savings is less than $299, you receive a full refund. The PDF still ships so you can verify the math.
Frequently asked questions
Where did these 10 patterns come from?
Each pattern is a rule from the same 32-rule library that powers the $299 LLM Bill Triage Deep Report. They were ranked by frequency-of-occurrence across real provider usage CSVs, then trimmed to the 10 with the largest average monthly dollar leak. The per-pattern dollar ranges are the observed P25 to P75 from real audits, not vendor marketing numbers.
Which pattern should I fix first?
Fix the one with the highest dollar leak in your specific bill, not the one ranked highest here. The simplest triage: pull last month's provider invoice, scan for the three line items with the largest dollar amounts, then match each to the pattern above. Most bills have at least one pattern from the list contributing 30 percent or more of total spend.
Is this the free cheat sheet the calculator pages promise?
Yes — this is it. The free cheat sheet every calculator page promises is this very page, no PDF download required. You can bookmark it, print it (page is print-friendly), or save it for offline reading via your browser. If you opted in via email, you receive a link to this same page so you can find it again later.
How often is the cheat sheet updated?
Reviewed monthly against the underlying 32-rule library. When a new pattern enters the top 10 by frequency-and-impact, it replaces the lowest-ranked existing pattern. Provider rate updates flow through within 24 hours of the source-of-truth pricing page changing.
I have a waste pattern not on this list. Can you add it?
Yes. Email miloantaeus@gmail.com with the pattern, the rough monthly dollar leak it causes, and a one-line description of the fix. If it is generalizable and worth more than $300 per month for the average affected team, the pattern is added to the cheat sheet and a matching calculator ships within 48 hours.