Overview

Aqua's recommendation feature displays RI and SP purchase suggestions that take into account the specific services, target AWS accounts, and sharing scope of your Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.

This makes it possible to simulate purchases for scenarios where RI and SP sharing is configured for a limited set of AWS accounts or Organisation Units, and to narrow recommendations by specifying target services.

Calculation Logic

Aqua's recommendations are based on the past month's AWS usage. Unlike AWS Cost Explorer — which uses "cheaper than on-demand" as its baseline — Aqua calculates recommendations based on the minimum instance running hours, resulting in lower-risk recommendations.

AWS Cost Explorer recommends purchases when the break-even point falls within the RI or SP term, which can sometimes include higher-risk instances. Aqua applies a more conservative threshold.

Recommendations in Aqua are based on the AWS accounts registered in Ripple. Instances running on unregistered accounts will not be included in recommendations.

You can also specify a recommendation percentage (a threshold for the target usage volume) when setting conditions. This lets you compare scenarios at different usage thresholds and build in risk hedging.

RI and SP recommendations can be calculated in combination, making it easy to compare multiple purchase patterns side by side.

Aqua vs AWS Cost Explorer:

	AWS Cost Explorer	Aqua
Baseline	Cheaper than on-demand (break-even within contract term)	Based on minimum instance running hours
Condition setting	RI and SP must be evaluated separately	RI and SP can be evaluated simultaneously
Account targeting	Payer account or linked account	Payer account, multiple accounts, or specific accounts

How to Use

Select the AWS account(s) you want to purchase RIs or SPs for — choose the Payer account for payer-level purchases, or a Linked account for linked account purchases
Select the services you are considering purchasing RIs for
Select the services for EC2 SP and Compute SP respectively — if a service is not applicable, leave it blank and it will be excluded from recommendations
Under Recommendation unit, select either:
- Combine Selected Accounts — recommendations based on shared RI/SP settings across accounts
- Individual Accounts — recommendations for single accounts with sharing disabled
Select your purchase options and click Show Recommendations
Results will appear in the table below — use these to inform your RI and SP purchase decisions

You can also reference the Coverage Rate page in Aqua when evaluating purchases.

Dashboard Metrics

Metric	Description
On-demand cost / month	The on-demand equivalent of the recommended purchase — the cost if no recommendation is purchased
Post-reduction monthly cost	The cost after applying the recommended purchase, prorated to match the payment option (e.g. annual upfront divided by 12)
Estimated monthly savings	The expected monthly savings if the recommended purchase is made
Savings rate	Estimated monthly savings ÷ on-demand cost
Total upfront payment	Total upfront amount, shown when an upfront payment option is selected
Total monthly payment	Total monthly amount, shown when a monthly payment option is selected

Reserved Instances — Column Reference

Column	Description
Service	AWS service
Account	Purchasing account
Zone	Region
Recommendation	Instance type and quantity
Platform	Operating system
Tenancy	Shared or dedicated
Post-reduction cost	Cost after the RI is applied
Savings rate	Reduction rate relative to current usage cost

Note on "Units": Units are used when calculating and converting the number of instances using normalisation factors. For example, if a t3.nano instance is running continuously, converting using the micro normalisation factor gives: 1 ÷ 0.25 units/hr = 4 units/hr.

Savings Plans — Column Reference

Column	Description
Account	Purchasing account
Zone	Region
SP product family	Type of SP (Compute, EC2 Instance, AWS SageMaker)
Instance family	Instance family (e.g. t2, c5)
Hourly rate	Commitment amount ($/hour)
Post-reduction cost	Cost after the SP is applied
Savings rate	Reduction rate relative to current usage cost

Units for SPs follow the same normalisation logic as RIs. However, since SPs have a specific commitment against the normalised size, that commitment value is used when calculating the hourly rate. For example: t3.nano = $XX/hr.

Reading the Graph

The graph sits between the condition filters and the recommendation list.

Before recommendations are displayed

Shows on-demand usage hours by service and instance type based on current usage.

After recommendations are displayed

Simulates the impact of purchasing the recommended RIs or SPs, overlaid against historical usage data.

Example: If historical data shows t2-class instances running on-demand, purchasing the Aqua-recommended t2 RIs would result in nearly all usage being covered by RIs.