How to Build Cost-Effective Cloud Architectures

Cloud adoption has transformed how developers build and scale applications, but it also brings new challenges in controlling costs. As cloud bills grow alongside usage, designing cost-efficient cloud architectures becomes essential for developers, DevOps specialists, architects and team leaders.

This post explores key strategies for optimizing cloud expenditure and align it with actual needs without incurring cloud wastage spend.

Cloud Adoption in 2025: The Big Picture

Cloud computing has been growing for years and while some organizations are moving back to on premise due to costs, cloud’s popularity is still one the rise. In fact:

• According to a 2025 report from SlashData™, Continuous Delivery Foundation and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), 93% of all developers are deploying to cloud for some part of their development process. When looking at backend service development, the performance of cloud-oriented developers rises to 96%
• The same report highlights that the usage of hybrid cloud has increased to 29%, while multi-cloud has reached 22%.
• Migrating more workloads to the cloud is a top initiative for 87% of organizations in 2025, as reported by Flexera

Thus, for developers, DevOps experts and development teams, mastering cloud-native technologies and tools is essential to deliver modern applications. In particular, experts are asked to properly set up, configure and manage their clouds to optimize costs. Let’s see why.

Why Cloud Cost Optimization Matters

Moving from on premise to the cloud can help reduce capital and operational expenses, as long the transition as well as cloud usage are properly planned and managed. Easier said than done:

• Key metrics for assessing progress against cloud goals are cost efficiency/savings, which jumped to 87% in 2025, and cost avoidance (64%)
• While estimated wasted cloud spend is decreasing, it accounts for ¼ of total cloud costs, remaining an issue for many organizations

As organizations look to optimize their cloud investments, choosing the right pricing model for cloud deployment platforms becomes a crucial architectural decision. Development and DevOps teams can help identify the solutions that work best. The two most common approaches for PaaS cloud subscriptions are pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and tiered (fixed or reserved) plans. Each offers distinct advantages depending on workload patterns, predictability and business priorities.

Aligning Cloud Costs with Usage: The Power of PAYG

A PAYG model is designed for maximum flexibility. You pay only for the resources you actually use, typically billed per minute. Thus, this model is ideal for development, testing or applications with unpredictable or fluctuating demand. This approach helps teams avoid overprovisioning and enables rapid scaling up or down as needs change.

For example, a minimal development setup on Payara Cloud that relies on the PAYG option, uses 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM for 4 hours a day can be extremely economical, costing only a few dollars per month.

Maximizing Predictability and Stability: Fixed Rates for Cloud Solutions

PAYG is not always ideal, though. For production workloads that require consistent, always-on resources, tiered or fixed plans may offer better cost predictability and additional functionalities or benefits. Payara Cloud’s Standard Plan, for instance, provides a pre-paid allocation of 2 vCPU cores and 4 GB RAM for a fixed monthly fee, with the ability to scale up to 32 vCPU cores and access features such as horizontal scaling. This model is well-suited to teams and businesses running critical applications that need stable performance or prefer to avoid variable monthly costs.

Best Practices for Cost-Efficient Cloud Architectures

Besides looking at a suitable cloud subscription model, optimizing the way you use your PaaS and apps in the cloud can help you further reduce expenses. In particular:

• Tag and monitor resources for better visibility and accountability
• Set budgets and alerts to avoid unexpected overruns
• Review usage patterns regularly and adjust resource allocation accordingly

Eliminating Cloud Spend Wastage: Stop Paying for Idle Resources

In addition to following these cloud best practices, developers should keep an eye on idle resources, such as development or test environments running outside working hours and over-provisioned production instances. In effect, a major driver of cloud overspend is paying for resources that sit idle.

Cost-efficient architectures use scheduling and auto-scaling to ensure resources are only active when needed:

• Strategically schedule non-production environments to shut down outside business hours, potentially cutting related cloud costs by 60% or more
• Implement auto-scaling policies so compute resources automatically adjust to real-time load, ensuring you only pay for what you use
• Monitor and right-size resources regularly, using built-in tools or third-party solutions to identify and eliminate underutilized instances

Get the Most of Your Cloud Setup Now

For key tips on how to optimize cloud usage, avoid overpaying for idle time and confidently choose the right Payara Cloud plan for your team, download our latest cheat sheet here.