What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
AWS Trusted Advisor is an automated best-practice auditor for your AWS environment. The service continuously analyzes your resources and compares them against AWS best practices across five categories: Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Limits. Trusted Advisor also incorporates signals from AWS Config, AWS Security Hub (CSPM controls), and AWS Compute Optimizer.
The scope of functionality depends on your AWS support plan: Basic or Developer Support provides all Service Limits checks plus selected Security and Fault Tolerance checks, but without automatic refresh. Full access to all checks, including automatic updates and API access, requires Business Support+, Enterprise Support, or a Unified Operations plan. AWS is currently restructuring its support plans: Developer Support, Business Support, and Enterprise On-Ramp will be discontinued on January 1, 2027, and replaced by Business Support+ and Enterprise Support.
Core Features
- Cost Optimization: Identifies unused or underutilized resources
- Performance: Recommendations for optimal service configuration
- Security: Detects vulnerabilities like open ports or missing MFA, complemented by Security Hub CSPM controls
- Fault Tolerance: Checks redundancy and backup configurations
- Service Limits: Warns before reaching AWS quotas
- Trusted Advisor Priority: Context-driven, prioritized recommendations for Enterprise Support and Unified Operations customers
Typical Use Cases
Continuous Cost Optimization: Trusted Advisor identifies unused EC2 instances, oversized RDS databases, and Reserved Instances with low utilization, giving teams a concrete starting point for savings measures.
Security Posture Improvement: Security teams use Trusted Advisor as a first line of defense. The service detects publicly accessible S3 buckets, unrestricted Security Groups, and root accounts without MFA.
Capacity Planning: Before major deployments, Trusted Advisor shows how close you are to service limits. This prevents surprises during scaling and enables timely limit increases.
Benefits
- Automatic identification of savings potential and security risks
- Proactive warnings without additional tools
- Easy prioritization through urgency categorization
- Integration with CloudWatch/EventBridge for automated alerting workflows
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Trusted Advisor: choosing the right support plan, dashboard setup, recommendation prioritization, remediation workflow implementation, and regular reviews.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
AWS Trusted Advisor is an automated best-practice auditor that continuously reviews your AWS environment across Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Limits, providing concrete recommendations.
Which checks are available for free?
With Basic or Developer Support, you get access to all Service Limits checks plus selected checks in the Security and Fault Tolerance categories. Full access to all checks requires Business Support+, Enterprise Support, or a Unified Operations plan.
What does AWS Trusted Advisor cost?
Trusted Advisor itself is not billed separately; it is included in AWS support plans. The scope of functionality depends on your plan, and full access to all checks with automatic refresh requires at least Business Support+.
Can Trusted Advisor automatically fix problems?
Trusted Advisor identifies problems and provides recommendations but does not automatically remediate them. However, you can build automated remediation workflows using the Trusted Advisor API, Amazon EventBridge, and AWS Lambda.
How often are checks updated?
With Business Support+, Enterprise Support, or Unified Operations, checks are refreshed automatically and available via API. With Basic or Developer Support, Security checks must be refreshed manually in the console.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.