How to
Commitment Optimizer
Identify Reserved Instance and Savings Plan purchase opportunities based on your actual workload patterns.
Back to How To GuidesWhat the Commitment Optimizer Does
The Commitment Optimizer analyzes your current cloud resource inventory and surfaces workloads that are good candidates for Reserved Instances (AWS), Savings Plans (AWS), Azure Reserved VM Instances, or GCP Committed Use Discounts.
It does not automatically purchase commitments -- it gives you the analysis, estimated savings, and confidence score so you can make an informed purchasing decision.
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How It Works
The optimizer uses the current inventory snapshot from your last scan. For each eligible resource (compute instances, databases, Kubernetes node groups), it evaluates:
- Current on-demand pricing vs. 1-year and 3-year commitment pricing from the cloud provider pricing API.
- Instance type, region, and operating system to match the correct commitment SKU.
- Whether the resource has been present across multiple scans (indicating stability).
- Confidence score -- higher confidence means the resource appears consistently in inventory and its workload pattern is stable.
Important
Commitment recommendations are based on inventory at scan time and cloud provider list prices. They are illustrative estimates -- not guarantees. Always review your actual utilization metrics in the cloud provider console before purchasing a commitment.
Reading Recommendations
Each recommendation shows:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Resource | The cloud resource (instance type, region, provider) |
| Commitment Type | Reserved Instance, Savings Plan, or Committed Use Discount |
| Term | 1 year or 3 years |
| Payment Option | All upfront, partial upfront, or no upfront |
| Est. Monthly Savings | Difference between on-demand and commitment pricing per month |
| Upfront Cost | Total upfront payment required for the commitment |
| Break-even | Months until upfront cost is recovered from monthly savings |
| Confidence | High / Medium / Low -- based on resource stability across scans |
Sort by Est. Monthly Savings to prioritize the largest opportunities. Filter by Confidence: High to focus on the most stable workloads first.
Acting on Recommendations
TurboFinOps does not purchase commitments on your behalf. To act on a recommendation:
- 1Review the recommendation details -- resource, term, savings estimate, and break-even period.
- 2Click "View in Console" (where available) to go directly to the purchase flow in your cloud provider.
- 3For AWS: go to EC2 - Reserved Instances or Cost Management - Savings Plans.
- 4For Azure: go to Cost Management + Billing - Reservations.
- 5For GCP: go to Billing - Committed Use Discounts.
- 6After purchasing, re-scan your environment. The optimizer will update recommendations to reflect the new commitment coverage.
FAQ
Why is my confidence score Low for an instance that has been running for months?
Confidence is calculated from how many scans the resource has appeared in. If your scan frequency is low (e.g. Free plan with 1 scan/day), the optimizer has fewer data points. Increase scan frequency or run manual scans to improve confidence over time.
The optimizer shows no recommendations. Why?
This can happen if no resources in your inventory match commitment-eligible types, if resources are very recently added (low confidence), or if all eligible resources are already covered by existing commitments. Run a fresh scan and check back.
Are Spot Instance recommendations included?
Not currently. The optimizer focuses on RI and Savings Plan commitments. Spot/Preemptible recommendations are on the roadmap.
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