Most teams treat cloud cost as a finance problem.

But the root cause is usually engineering.

Bills spike, dashboards grow, alerts fire — but the underlying issue rarely gets fixed.

That idea stood out to me while reading about an approach where AWS cost was handled like an SRE problem — using the same mindset applied to reliability and performance.

Instead of asking “why is the bill high?”, the focus shifts to:

Where does unnecessary spend originate in the system?
What patterns keep repeating in cost spikes?
Which design decisions are driving ongoing waste?

What stands out is how closely this aligns with SRE thinking:

Treat cost as a measurable signal
Focus on root causes, not symptoms
Continuously optimize instead of reacting

It changes the conversation from cost-cutting to system design.

This article breaks it down clearly with real examples:
https://www.kubeblogs.com/we-treated-aws-cost-like-an-sre-problem-heres-the-result/

Do you treat cloud cost as a finance metric, or as an engineering problem?