RightSpend vs Usage.ai: EC2 Discounts Without the Commitment Risk

Usage.ai details are as of September 2026, from the Usage.ai public website.

At a glance#

	RightSpend	Usage.ai
What it focuses on	Commitment-Free Discounts on EC2	Automated, insured cloud commitments
Makes the change or recommends it	Manages the discounts for you; it doesn't touch your instances	Buys and rebalances commitments automatically ("autopilot activity" in its product)
Clouds	AWS only	AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
What it covers	EC2	Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and CUDs (its examples include RDS Reserved Instances, EC2 Savings Plans and GCP CUDs)
What you commit to	No 1- or 3-year commitment; short-dated discount rungs expire when usage falls	"No multi-year contracts"; cancel anytime and "we buy back what we placed"
Pricing model	25% of the net-new savings it generates; you keep 75%	"A percentage of your realized savings"; no subscriptions or minimums
Price published	Yes: 25%	Percentage not published on the site

What Usage.ai does#

Usage.ai’s homepage headline is “Insurance for your cloud commitments”, with the promise to “Save 30–50% on AWS, GCP and Azure, without owning the commitment risk.” Its product dashboard shows effective savings, coverage against on-demand spend, and a feed of automatic actions, such as buying an RDS Reserved Instance, buying an EC2 Savings Plan or rebalancing GCP committed use discounts.

It sums up its guarantees in three tiles. “15 min”: fast setup, reading only at the billing layer, with no infrastructure changes, no multi-year contracts and no code, and you can “cancel anytime” and it will “buy back what we placed”. “$0”: “Only pay when you save”, as “a percentage of your realized savings”, with no subscriptions, minimums or premiums. “100%”: “Cashback guaranteed”, refunding what you don’t use as cashback or cloud credits, automatically.

Usage.ai also offers a savings calculator. It does not publish the percentage it charges.

What RightSpend does#

RightSpend offers Commitment-Free Discounts on EC2, in a range of 20–55% off on-demand. That is a range, not a promise: where you land depends on your usage. You don’t sign a 1- or 3-year commitment. RightSpend uses short-dated discount rungs, and when your usage falls those rungs expire rather than leaving you paying for capacity you don’t use. RightSpend doesn’t touch your instances. If you leave, the rungs expire and you’re back on on-demand, with no stranded commitment.

The fee is published: 25% of the net-new savings RightSpend generates, so you keep 75%. For example, if RightSpend produces $10,000 of net-new savings in a month, the fee is $2,500 and you keep $7,500. Savings from your own existing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans are not counted, so there is no fee on them. The fee is ongoing and scales with your EC2 use. It is billed monthly through AWS Marketplace. RightSpend is built for teams spending $25K a month or more on EC2.

When to choose Usage.ai#

• You want commitment coverage across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud from one vendor.
• You want commitments on services beyond EC2, such as RDS, and on other clouds’ discount types, such as GCP CUDs.
• You like a cashback guarantee on unused commitments, paid as cash or cloud credits.
• A fast, billing-only setup with no minimum spend matters more to you than a published percentage.

When to choose RightSpend#

• Your commitment question is mainly EC2, and you spend $25K a month or more on it.
• You want the fee stated up front, so you can model it: 25% of net-new savings, and you keep 75%.
• You want no fee on the savings you already get from your own RIs and Savings Plans.
• You want to buy through AWS Marketplace, with monthly billing.

Using them together#

Running two commitment tools on the same EC2 usage usually doesn’t make sense, because both would be trying to cover the same baseline. If you use Usage.ai for other clouds or for non-EC2 services, RightSpend can handle EC2 on AWS, and its fee only counts net-new savings.

A rate tool lowers the price per hour. It doesn’t change how many hours you run. On AWS, CloudFix handles the usage side: idle resources, older configurations and oversized services.

Run the RightSpend calculator to estimate your EC2 savings and the fee, or read How RightSpend works. More comparisons are on the comparison hub.