Announcing Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer

Starting today, you can easily model your next Savings Plans purchases and evaluate the impact on cost, coverage, and utilization in the AWS Billing and Cost Management Console. You can input your own commitment amount or generate a recommended commitment that is designed to maximize your cost savings. Furthermore, you can customize your analysis by selecting a specific lookback period and/or excluding expiring Savings Plans to plan for upcoming renewals.

Why should you start using Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer?

Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer helps you make faster, more informed decisions, when purchasing Savings Plans for your environment. We created this experience with a focus on flexibility, giving you the ability to generate custom recommendations that will maximize your savings, while also allowing you to customize the commitment to your unique needs. For example, you might want to start by purchasing part of the recommended commitment amount, target a specific coverage percentage, or plan for renewals of expiring Savings Plans. With this in mind, we wanted to let you examine the coverage and utilization impacts of various Savings Plans scenarios, so you can make purchase decisions by leveraging the application logic of Savings Plans that is used in your environment. With this feature, you can look at the impact of different types of purchases, compare the results, and make your purchases, all in the AWS console.

What are the new features in Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer?

The new Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer gives you the flexibility to customize your recommendations based on your needs. For example, you can select a specific lookback period, purchase part of the recommended commitment amount, target a specific coverage percentage, or plan for renewals of expiring Savings Plans.

• Custom lookback period: With the ability to select custom date range within the last 60 days, you can now either include or exclude certain days or weeks that have different usage patterns. For example, if you ran a lot of workloads temporarily for a few days, and you know you will not run them in the future, you can pick a date range that does not include these resources. Alternatively, if you know those workloads will persist in the future, you can select a date range that captures the additional usage and base your commitment purchase on this data.

Figure 1. Screenshot of lookback period in Savings Plans

• Expiring Savings Plans: You can select savings plans that are expiring in the next 90 days to exclude from the analysis, as if they have already expired. Planning for savings plans renewals sometimes means validating if you want to keep the same commitment amount or make a change. By removing expiring savings plans from the analysis, you can plan for your renewal ahead of time, make adjustments and see the resulting impact on savings or coverage, and be ready for that renewal ahead of time.

Figure 2. Expiring Savings Plans option

• Custom purchase amounts: You can easily switch between the recommended purchase amount for the highest cost savings or input your own amount. Validate whether the recommended commitment aligns with your financial goals, or adjust it to match your purchasing strategy. If you’re targeting a specific coverage percentage, enter a custom amount, review the estimated coverage in the Coverage tab, and adjust the commitment until it matches your goal. For example, if the recommended purchase is $10 an hour, you can simulate $9 or $11 commitments to see how that impacts your environment before making a final decision.

Figure 3. Custom hourly commitment option

For each of these scenarios, you will see your cost, coverage, and utilization graphed out for you using hourly data, similar to what you are used to in the Savings Plan coverage and utilization reports. With this data, you can quickly make your savings plans comparisons, see the impact over time accounting for weekly peaks and troughs in usage, and the resulting savings. The custom input options and the visual display of the impact can assist your Savings Plan efforts and help you make confident commitment decisions faster.

Figure 4. Visual display of cost, coverage, and utilization impact for your Savings Plans purchase

How can you get started?

You can get started by navigating to the Savings Plan Purchase Analyzer in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. You can also look at Savings Plans recommendations to explore your savings options and then quickly move to the Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer to make further adjustments.

Figure 5. Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer console page

For more information about new Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer, see the user guide.

Conclusion

Savings Plan Purchase Analyzer enables you to simulate different Savings Plans commitments to help you make your next purchase. Use Savings Plan Analyzer today to plan for your renewals, customized purchases, and to get recommendations for custom date ranges of usage.