A Practical Guide to Amazon CloudWatch Logs Cost Optimization

This article provides a practical guide to reducing Amazon CloudWatch Logs costs by optimizing ingestion, storage, and retention without deleting or exporting logs.

• Log classes determine ingestion costs: Standard class offers full features; Infrequent Access class costs ~50% less but has reduced features
• Intelligent Tiering automatically moves log data between three storage tiers based on access frequency, reducing storage costs over time
• Retention policies set permanent deletion boundaries; use AWS Config rules and EventBridge automation to enforce retention across log groups
• StoredBytes metrics track data distribution across tiers for monitoring and dashboard visualization
• Application logs benefit from Standard class with Intelligent Tiering; debug logs suit Infrequent Access class with short retention

Organizations can immediately enable Intelligent Tiering, audit existing log groups for retention policies, and evaluate new log groups for appropriate log classes to achieve significant cost savings.