Chef's Reality Check: $723 Billion in Cloud Spending, 32% Wasted
Let's talk about the elephant in the cloud kitchen.
Global cloud spending reached $723.4 billion in 2025. That's massive growth. But here's the number that should keep you up at night:
32%
of that spend is waste
$230B+
Gone. Burned. Serving no one.
$723.4B
Total cloud spend in 2025
Why This Matters for Every Team
FinOps has finally risen to the same level of importance as DevOps and SecOps. This isn't just an industry report finding — it's showing up in boardrooms. Cloud optimization is now the #1 priority for businesses.
The shift is real
CFOs and CIOs are now asking the same question: "Where's our cloud money going?" If your team can't answer that question with data, you're already behind.
The Chef's Perspective
Most teams think they need enterprise tools costing $25K+ to tackle this. They don't.
The waste comes from:
Idle resources nobody turned off
That dev environment from 6 months ago? Still running. Still billing.
Oversized instances "just in case"
8 vCPUs running at 5% utilization because "what if there's a spike?"
Forgotten dev environments
"Don't touch it! That's for the Q2 project." — Q2 of 2023.
Lack of tagging discipline
If you can't identify who owns it, you can't optimize it.
No regular cost reviews
Out of sight, out of mind — until the invoice arrives.
The Recipe That Actually Works
You don't need a Michelin-star budget to run a cost-efficient kitchen. You need consistent habits and the right recipes.
Tag everything (the secret ingredient)
No tag = no deploy. Make it policy. This single habit enables everything else.
Learn tagging best practicesReview costs weekly (15 minutes, huge impact)
Schedule a 15-minute weekly review. Catch anomalies before they become disasters.
Get the FinOps quick start checklistSet budget alerts (no surprises)
Every cloud provider offers free alerting. Use it. Set thresholds at 50%, 80%, and 100%.
Right-size based on actual usage, not guesses
Look at 30 days of utilization data. That m5.4xlarge at 5%? It's a t3.medium waiting to happen.
Master waste detectionClean up what you're not using
Unattached EBS volumes, old snapshots, unused elastic IPs — delete them. Today.
The 32% Isn't Inevitable
Teams that apply basic FinOps hygiene cut waste by 20-30% in the first quarter. Not through expensive tools. Through discipline.
20-30%
Waste reduction in first quarter with basic FinOps
$0
Cost of the habits that get you there
Chef's Pro Tip
Start with one cloud, one team, one week. Prove the value, then expand. Trying to optimize everything at once is the fastest path to optimizing nothing.
Ready to Start Cooking?
CloudCostChefs has free tools and guides to help you cut cloud waste without enterprise-level budgets.
CloudCostChefs: Making cloud cost optimization practical and accessible for everyone. Because $230 billion in waste shouldn't be normal.