# Excessive AWS Config Costs from Spot Instances

Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/excessive-aws-config-costs-from-spot-instances

[Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) 

# Excessive AWS Config Costs from Spot Instances

## Explanation

Spot Instances are designed to be short-lived, with frequent interruptions and replacements. When AWS Config continuously records every lifecycle change for these instances, it produces a large number of CIRs. This drives costs significantly higher without delivering meaningful compliance insight, since Spot Instances are typically stateless and non-critical. In environments with heavy Spot usage, Config costs can balloon and exceed the value of tracking these transient resources.

## Relevant Billing Model

AWS Config charges per CIR. Ephemeral resources like Spot Instances can generate extremely high CIR volumes because each interruption and replacement is recorded as a new resource event. This creates cost disproportionate to governance value.

## Detection

- Review AWS Config cost trends and correlate spikes with increased Spot Instance usage

- Assess the number of configuration items recorded for EC2 instances relative to the count of long-lived resources

- Identify whether Spot Instances are generating repeated records due to interruptions and replacements

- Confirm whether tracking ephemeral Spot resources is required for compliance or governance purposes

## Remediation

- Use tag-based exclusions to prevent AWS Config from recording ephemeral Spot Instances and other transient resources

- Apply standardized tagging (e.g., \`finops:config-exclude:true\`) and configure AWS Config to filter them out

- If some visibility is required, switch Config from continuous to periodic recording to reduce event volume

- Maintain full Config tracking for long-lived production resources while limiting or excluding transient workloads

## Relevant Documentation

- AWS Config Pricing | Selecting Resources to Record

[Submit Feedback](https://hub.pointfive.co/inefficiencies/excessive-aws-config-costs-from-spot-instances)

## At a glance

Reference

CER-0228

Cloud provider

AWS

Service

AWS Config

Category

[Other](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/other)

Inefficiency type

Over-Recording of Ephemeral Resources

## Contributed by

- Abdeldjallil Koutchoukali 

### Abdeldjallil Koutchoukali

Lead Consultant FinOps @ Devoteam

[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdeldjalil-koutchoukali/)

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