Comparison
nOps alternative: automation platform vs. human-verified audit
nOps is an automation platform. Continuous commitment management, spot orchestration and optimisation, typically priced as a percentage of savings or spend (as of mid-2026. Verify current terms on their site). Automation suits ongoing, repetitive decisions. The question for an SME is what you need first: standing machinery, or a one-time deep clean with a human check on every finding.
Start with the number: the free scan shows what a deep clean would recover, before any platform subscription.
Run the free scanAutomation vs. audit
- →Continuous automation vs. one-time depth. Platforms like nOps continuously manage commitments and capacity. Valuable when usage shifts weekly. The audit is a point-in-time deep read of everything, including the categories automation doesn't touch: orphaned storage, dead log groups, extended-support fees, forgotten regions.
- →Percentage-of-savings vs. fixed fee. Savings-share pricing scales with your bill and continues as long as the platform runs. £499 is once, known in advance, and the guarantee (20%+ found or free) carries the risk instead of the pricing model.
- →Machine confidence vs. human verification. Automated actions need high confidence, so platforms act conservatively on the unambiguous cases. Our audit pairs 70+ automated checks with human verification, which is how the judgment-call findings. The memory-bound "idle" instance, the compliance-relevant log group, get called correctly.
- →Access model. Standing platforms hold ongoing write access to act in your account. The scan is a read-only role you create and delete; the audit changes nothing. You (or we, in the retainer) apply fixes deliberately.
Put numbers on it
Frequently asked questions
Is savings-share pricing bad?
Not inherently. It aligns incentives for continuous services. The trade-off is that it keeps billing against savings the platform maintains, and percentage pricing on a growing bill grows with it. For a one-time cleanup of accumulated waste, fixed-price with a guarantee is simpler to reason about; for perpetual commitment management at scale, savings-share can be fair.
Could we use the audit and an automation platform together?
Yes, in that order: the audit clears the backlog and tells you what your real baseline is; automation then manages commitments against that clean baseline. Automating on top of an account full of idle resources optimises the waste along with the workload.
Keep reading
Prices checked against AWS list rates on 2 August 2026. AWS changes prices; treat every figure here as a close approximation rather than a quote.
£499 fixed. Free scan first. 20%+ found or it's free.
The scan is read-only. A role you create and delete, no keys shared, and shows your estimated monthly saving before anyone talks about money.