2026 Cloud Cost Optimization Report: Enterprise cloud waste rate drops to 28%

Flexera's 2026 cloud cost report reveals mixed news: enterprise cloud waste dropped from 32% to 28%, but nearly one-third of cloud spend is still wasted.

Key data

  • Average enterprise cloud spend: $47M/year (large enterprises exceed $100M)
  • Wasted cloud spend: ~$13M/year (at average $47M)
  • RI/savings plan coverage improved from 45% to 52%
  • FinOps-practicing enterprises show 15 percentage points lower waste

Primary waste sources

  1. Idle resources (38% of waste): Dev/test instances running unused
  2. Over-provisioning (25%): Larger instance sizes than needed
  3. Unused storage volumes (12%): Detached but undeleted
  4. Unoptimized data transfer (10%): Cross-region data transfer costs
  5. Other (15%): Unused IPs, load balancers, etc.

Optimization checklist for small teams

  • Review spending regularly with Cost Explorer
  • Set budget limits and auto-shutdown for non-production
  • Purchase reserved instances or savings plans (30-60% savings)
  • Use Auto Scaling to match actual load
  • Delete unused storage volumes and IPs
  • Right-size instances with sizing tools
  • Use Spot/Preemptible instances for fault-tolerant workloads

16IDC Takeaway

Cloud cost optimization has become an ongoing engineering practice, not a one-time activity. Every cloud-using team should integrate FinOps into daily workflows. For SMBs, choosing transparent-pricing providers (Vultr, Linode) also helps control costs at the source.

Source: Flexera