Stopped EC2 Instance Still Billing
A stopped instance no longer bills for compute, but its attached EBS volumes and any Elastic IP keep billing until they are deleted or released.
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AWS
Found, explained, handed over.
Findings with a dollar figure attached, idle, oversized, orphaned, unscheduled and undiscounted spend.
Detect
ZopNight checks this automatically across AWS, with read-only access to the account.
Explain
Every finding says exactly what to change: Delete idle EC2 instance. Where the saving can be proven it is priced; where it cannot, the finding says so.
Fix
The finding opens with the fix already written out, step by step, so it is one ticket, not an investigation.
- Applies to
- EC2 Instances on AWS
- The fix, by hand
- Confirm zero application dependencies on this instance. Check load balancer target groups, Route53 records, and downstream IPs.
- CloudWatch → Metrics → EC2 → NetworkIn / CPUUtilization over the last 14-30 days to confirm the idle pattern.
- EC2 → Instances → select the resource → Actions → Image and templates → Create image (snapshot the AMI in case you need to rehydrate).
- Actions → Instance state → Terminate instance.
- EC2 → Volumes → delete any associated EBS volumes if they did not auto-delete (root volumes do; secondary volumes typically don't).
- Release any Elastic IP that was associated with this instance. An allocated Elastic IP keeps billing every month even after the instance is terminated, so releasing it (EC2 → Elastic IPs → Release) is part of the saving. Also remove key pairs that were only attached to this instance.
These are the steps the finding carries in the product.
- Category
- Idle resources. Resources running but doing no useful work: zero invocations, no connections, no traffic.
- Where it appears
- The Savings tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
- Rule ID
RC-001- Full reference
Related checks
See the idle resources in your account.
Connect a read-only role and the first pass runs on your own estate. This check, and the rest of the catalogue, with it.
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- $30M+annualised cloud spend under management
- 550K+resources tracked since launch
- 20-60%off the bill in the first month
- SOC 2Type II report, plus ISO 27001
Figures published on zop.dev.