Your OpenSearch Bill Is Bigger Than You Think: A Technical Cost Breakdown

OpenSearch domains often cost far more than expected because the total bill combines compute (data/master/warm nodes), EBS storage and performance tiers, snapshot storage, and data-transfer charges—each scaling independently. The post provides a practical monthly estimation formula and lists high-ROI audit checks such as identifying idle domains, right-sizing over-provisioned nodes, switching from gp2 to gp3, and enforcing snapshot retention policies.