Ask HN: Has AWS ever surprised you with a bill?

4 noway_bro 2 7/7/2025, 12:30:16 AM

I’m validating a small tool that could’ve caught a $42k DynamoDB spike before it snowballed — within 10 minutes, via Slack alert.

Trying to talk to 10 devs or engineers who’ve been hit by unexpected AWS charges (Lambda loops, S3 egress, log retention, etc).

Not selling anything. Just want to understand:

- What caused it? - How you found out? - What you tried after? - Would a $15/mo tool with IaC cost-diff + Slack alerts have helped?

If that’s you (or your team), I’d love to hear from you.

Comments (2)

muzani · 8h ago

Yeah, it's a meme at this point that if you're learning AWS, expect to be homeless because you left the EC2 on. Maybe not that bad, but I feel like most people have the logging to detect spikes etc, except those who don't know how to do logging.

scarface_74 · 6h ago

Funny enough, AWS has added recursive lambda call prevention within the last two years.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/invocation-recu...

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Ask HN: Has AWS ever surprised you with a bill?

Comments (2)