As startups grow and scale, cloud bills often grow right along with them. Services like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure offer powerful infrastructure. But, without careful optimization, it’s easy to overspend. That’s where cloud discount providers like Pump, Spendbase, and CloudKeeper come in. These companies exist to help startups and small-to-mid-sized businesses reduce their cloud costs (often by 30–70%) with minimal effort.

In this article, we’ll break down how these platforms work, why they’re able to get discounts that you can’t get on your own, and whether they’re right for your business.

Cloud discount providers are companies that act as intermediaries between you and your cloud provider (like AWS or Google Cloud). They use a mix of volume-based purchasing, reserved instance management, and billing optimization to lower your cloud bill, without requiring changes to your code or infrastructure.

In most cases, you keep using the same cloud services, APIs, and dashboards. The only change is that the discount provider either takes over billing or optimizes your usage patterns to access better rates on your behalf.

Cloud providers reward customers who commit to longer usage periods or spend high volumes with steep discounts. But most startups:

• Don’t have enough scale to qualify for enterprise-level pricing
• Don’t have the time or expertise to manage Reserved Instances or Savings Plans

Discount providers solve this by pooling together the cloud spend of hundreds or thousands of customers, giving them the buying power of a much larger company. They also use software (or in some cases, human FinOps teams) to continuously monitor and optimize your usage to fit into the most efficient billing models.

Each platform is built differently, with distinct strengths and ideal customer profiles.

Pump is an automated cloud savings tool designed for engineering-light teams who want quick, meaningful AWS or GCP savings without changing their infrastructure. It’s free for companies spending under $200,000/month and requires minimal setup.

How It Works: 

• Pump uses AI to automatically apply Reserved Instances and Savings Plans based on your usage. You get billed through Pump, and the savings are passed on to you.

Key Features:

• Discounts: Up to 60–70% savings on AWS, GCP, and Azure compute/database services
• No engineering work required—just connect your cloud billing account
• Pricing: Free for most startups
• Works best with consistent usage of EC2, RDS, CloudSQL, and similar services

Who Should Use Pump:

• Startups with predictable AWS, GCP, Azure usage (especially EC2 and databases)
• Teams with limited ops/devops support
• Early-stage startups looking for fast, automated savings

When Not to Use Pump:

• If most of your usage is in serverless (Lambda, Cloud Functions) or storage services
• If you want help managing SaaS spend or negotiating vendor contracts

Spendbase goes beyond cloud optimization by also managing SaaS license costs, vendor contracts, and software procurement. It includes both automation and human negotiation, making it ideal for finance or ops teams looking to consolidate spend visibility across cloud and SaaS.

How It Works: 

• Spendbase negotiates deals for you and manages Reserved Instances. It also offers SaaS spend optimization.

Key Features:

• Discounts: Up to 30% savings on AWS + savings on SaaS tools like Slack, Miro, Notion, etc.
• Includes license optimization and vendor negotiation
• Centralized dashboard for forecasting and spend analysis
• White-glove onboarding and support

Who Should Use Spendbase:

• Startups with significant SaaS costs in addition to cloud
• Finance or operations teams managing budgets across departments
• Companies looking for human support in optimizing cloud contracts and renewals

When Not to Use Spendbase:

• If you’re just focused on maximizing AWS/GCP compute discounts
• If you’re very early-stage with minimal SaaS or infrastructure footprint

CloudKeeper is a cost optimization platform tailored for companies fully on AWS and ready for proactive, enterprise-style cost management. It bundles guaranteed discounts, FinOps dashboards, and consulting support into one offering.

How It Works: 

• CloudKeeper pre-purchases Reserved Instances at scale and passes the savings to you. You also get access to their FinOps dashboard and support.

Key Features:

• Discounts: Guaranteed 15–25% AWS savings through upfront Reserved Instance management
• Dedicated FinOps dashboards and reporting tools
• Support team available for architectural reviews and cost audits
• Suitable for spend levels starting around $5K/month and up

Who Should Use CloudKeeper:

• Mid-sized startups spending $5K+/month on AWS
• Companies needing budget predictability and cost visibility
• Teams who want hands-on support and enterprise-grade tooling

When Not to Use CloudKeeper:

• If you use multiple clouds (CloudKeeper is AWS-only)
• If your usage fluctuates heavily or you need flexibility over commitment
• If you’re a very small team or early MVP not yet spending much on AWS

Not exactly. These platforms typically focus on services that support Reserved Instances or long-term billing models. That includes:

• EC2 (virtual machines)
• RDS (relational databases)
• Redshift (data warehouse)
• CloudSQL (Google Cloud database)
• ElastiCache, EBS, Elastic Beanstalk, and others

Services like S3, CloudFront, or Lambda (which don’t have built-in reserved pricing) usually aren’t included in these savings. However, if your usage is compute-heavy, you’ll still save a lot.

If your cloud bill is more than $1,000/month, the answer is usually yes. The biggest value these platforms offer is hands-off savings. They do the optimization work for you so your engineers can focus on building.

Startups using mainly serverless or very low cloud spend might not see huge savings. But for companies running VMs, databases, or heavy workloads, the ROI is often immediate.

When choosing a cloud provider, focus on your team’s technical comfort level, your product’s needs, and your budget. DigitalOcean is great if you want something fast and simple. GCP excels at AI and data. Azure is ideal if you’re deep into the Microsoft ecosystem. IBM Cloud shines in compliance-heavy spaces. AWS offers the most power and flexibility for ambitious growth.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Fortunately, cloud providers make it easy to start small and switch later. Focus on what you need today, use startup credits to experiment, and evolve your setup as your startup grows.