EBS volumes often remain significantly overprovisioned compared to the actual data stored on them. Because billing is based on the total provisioned capacity—not actual usage—this creates ongoing waste when large volumes are only partially used. Overprovisioning may result from default sizing in templates, misestimated requirements, or conservative provisioning practices. Identifying and remediating these cases can lead to meaningful storage cost reductions without impacting workload performance.
Amazon EBS volumes are billed per GB-month of provisioned storage capacity, not based on the amount of data actually stored on the volume. You incur charges for the total provisioned size—even if only a portion of that capacity is used. This pricing model means volumes with low utilization relative to their allocated size can result in unnecessary costs.
