How to Reduce Kubernetes Costs by 30% Without Touching Your Code

You can cut 30% of spend with platform changes alone.

• Node mix: move 50–70% of stateless workloads to spot with on-demand buffer.
• Requests/limits: target <20% waste; enforce via LimitRange and weekly reports.
• Egress: co-locate chatty services; use private endpoints; trim cross-AZ traffic.
• Retention: reduce logs/metrics to 7–14 days; sample traces.
• HPA caps: prevent runaway autoscaling; align min/max with actual traffic.
• Staging hygiene: scheduled scale-downs and auto-delete preview namespaces.
• Load balancers: prune idle LBs and share where possible; internal LBs for internal traffic.
• Storage: right-size PVs, delete stale snapshots, and use GP3 with minimal IOPS by default.
• Budgets: set per-namespace budgets and burn-rate alerts; block overages with admission where feasible.

These changes don’t touch app code but make the bill lighter fast.***