Briefs · IV · Ideatives Inc. · Updated
Cost is a design decision.
Organizations estimate that 29% of their cloud spend is wasted, according to Flexera's State of the Cloud 2026 report (753 respondents, self-estimates), up from 27% in 2024 and 2025 and below the 2022 peak of 32%.
Flexera State of the Cloud, 2026 · 753 respondents
How much cloud spend is wasted?
Respondents to Flexera's State of the Cloud survey have estimated 27–32% of their cloud spend as wasted every year since 2020; the 2026 figure is 29% (self-estimates, vendor survey).
Show data table
| Report year | Wasted share (self-estimate) |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 30% |
| 2021 | 30% |
| 2022 | 32% |
| 2023 | 28% |
| 2024 | 27% |
| 2025 | 27% |
| 2026 | 29% |
Download CSV · compiled by Ideatives Inc. from the source above
Where it goes
10%
Average CPU use across Kubernetes clusters, down from 13% the year before.
Cast AI Kubernetes Cost Benchmark, 2025
Half
Of AWS data transfer costs, on average, are traffic between availability zones. 98% of organizations Datadog studied pay it.
Datadog State of Cloud Costs, 2024
98%
Of FinOps teams now manage AI spend, up from 63% in 2025 and 31% in 2024.
FinOps Foundation, State of FinOps 2026
Decided early, seen late
Decided
Service choice
AWS rates skipping cost analysis of every workload component a high risk.
AWS Well-Architected, COST05-BP02
Decided
Sizing
Clusters overprovisioned and managed by hand: 10% average CPU.
Cast AI, 2025
Decided
Placement
Data flow sets the transfer bill. Half of it is cross-zone.
Datadog, 2024
Seen
Bill
The cost appears as a line item after the decision has shipped.
Seen
FinOps review
Pre-deployment architecture costing is the #2 tool feature practitioners say doesn't exist yet.
State of FinOps, 2026
Our view: decisions made earlier fix more of the bill. No study we found measures this by stage.
What to do
- Put a cost estimate in every design review.
- Set requests and placement from measured use. Track idle and cross-zone traffic as named metrics.
- Give AI, GPUs and observability their own budget line and unit cost from day one.
Questions
- What percentage of cloud spend is wasted?
- Respondents to Flexera's State of the Cloud 2026 estimate 29% of their cloud spend is wasted. The figure has been 27–32% every year since 2020.
- What is average Kubernetes CPU utilization?
- 10% across clusters in Cast AI's 2025 Kubernetes Cost Benchmark (vendor telemetry, 2,100+ organizations), down from 13% the year before.
- How much of AWS data transfer cost is cross-zone traffic?
- About half on average, per Datadog's 2024 State of Cloud Costs (vendor telemetry, AWS only). 98% of the organizations studied pay it.
Sources
- Flexera, State of the Cloud Report, 2020–2026 editions. Vendor; respondent self-estimates.
- FinOps Foundation, State of FinOps 2026. 1,192 respondents.
- Datadog, State of Cloud Costs, June 2024. Vendor telemetry, AWS only.
- Cast AI, Kubernetes Cost Benchmark, March 2025. Vendor telemetry, 2,100+ organizations.
- AWS Well-Architected, Cost Optimization Pillar, June 2024.
- Grafana Labs, Observability Survey 2025: observability averages 17% of compute spend (most common answer 10%; 294 responses).