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CostCutter

A kill-switch for AWS. Scan and clean up resources across regions with a single command.

Destructive Tool

CostCutter permanently deletes AWS resources. This cannot be undone. Always run with --dry-run first and use only in sandbox/dev environments.

What Is CostCutter?

CostCutter is an automated cleanup tool that scans your AWS account and deletes resources to prevent unexpected costs. It's designed as an emergency "kill switch" for:

  • 🎓 Students learning AWS who fear accidental charges
  • 🧪 Experimenters testing services without financial risk
  • 🏖️ Sandbox environments that need automatic teardown
  • 🚀 Hackathons where resources must be cleaned up after events

Quick Example

# Preview what would be deleted (safe)
costcutter --dry-run

# Actually delete resources (irreversible!)
costcutter --no-dry-run

Documentation

Getting Started

New to CostCutter? Start here.

Configuration

Customize CostCutter's behavior.

Services

What resources CostCutter can delete.

  • Services Overview - What CostCutter does and doesn't do
  • EC2 - Instances, volumes, snapshots, IPs, keys, security groups
  • Elastic Beanstalk - Environments and applications
  • S3 - Buckets and all objects

Concepts

Understand how CostCutter works.

  • How It Works - Dependency graph, execution model, parallelism

Contributing

Help improve CostCutter.