The managed AWS Instance Scheduler alternative — no stack to deploy, no babysitting
Give your non-production AWS office hours. ParkMyAWS automatically stops and starts EC2 instances and RDS databases at night and on weekends, across every account and region you manage.
Park dev, staging and QA overnight and on weekends and cut an estimated 30–65% on on-demand non-prod compute — with nothing to deploy or maintain. Live in 5 minutes, with savings proof for every parked resource.
No credit card required. Cancel anytime. Flat monthly pricing from €39.
Why teams move off AWS Instance Scheduler
Free scheduling still costs engineering time. Owning the scheduler is fine — if you want one more CloudFormation stack to patch.
AWS Instance Scheduler is a valid option when your team wants to own the solution. There is no license fee. But your engineers still deploy, configure, and maintain the infrastructure behind it — a CloudFormation stack with Lambda functions, a DynamoDB table, and EventBridge rules in every account and region.
AWS also offers Systems Manager Quick Setup Scheduler, which makes native scheduling easier to configure across accounts and regions — but it only schedules EC2, not RDS, and it still leaves the work inside AWS. You still need to manage schedules, monitor behavior, and work out whether the effort is actually saving money.
Hosted action-automation tools such as Skeddly remove some infrastructure work, but they still leave you configuring individual actions and paying per action. They are useful automation tools, not a managed non-production savings dashboard.
Most platform teams already have a backlog, not a maintenance gap to fill. ParkMyAWS gives you the outcome without the upkeep: connect an AWS account with an IAM role and external ID, pick the regions you want to monitor, discover your EC2 instances and RDS databases, assign office-hours schedules from one dashboard, and track estimated savings per resource.
Your engineers get fewer moving parts to maintain. Your CTO gets a clear view of what was parked and what it saved. For the full breakdown, read the full ParkMyAWS vs AWS Instance Scheduler comparison.
Compare AWS scheduling options
Usage savings and rate savings are different jobs. ParkMyAWS solves a simpler engineering problem: dev, staging, and QA resources that keep running when nobody is using them.
| ParkMyAWS | Native AWS schedulers | DIY OSS | Enterprise rate tools | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Examples | ParkMyAWS | AWS Instance Scheduler; Systems Manager Quick Setup Scheduler (EC2 only) | Cloud Custodian; custom Lambda and EventBridge | nOps; ProsperOps; Spot by Flexera |
| Best fit | Funded startup engineering teams with non-prod sprawl | Teams that want to own a native AWS solution | Platform teams willing to build policies and workflows | FinOps and finance teams managing large cloud commitments |
| Setup | Connect your account and start scheduling in about 5 minutes | Configure a native AWS scheduler and its supporting setup | Write and maintain policies or automation | Adopt a broader enterprise cost-management platform |
| Infrastructure to host | None | AWS Instance Scheduler is self-hosted and maintained in your account | DIY Lambda and Cloud Custodian are self-hosted | Managed enterprise platform |
| Savings visibility | Estimated savings tracked per resource | No built-in per-resource savings proof | Not a built-in savings dashboard | Strong rate-optimization reporting, aimed at a different problem |
| Off-hours drift correction | Yes. Re-parks resources that are manually started off-hours | Scheduling depends on the native configuration you maintain | You build or configure the behavior | Not the primary use case |
| Accounts and regions | One dashboard for multiple AWS accounts and selected regions | Supported, with native AWS configuration | Depends on the tool and your implementation | Supported as part of a larger suite |
| Pricing model | Flat, predictable monthly tiers | No license fee, but you self-host and maintain it | OSS can be free to license, but you self-host and maintain it | Often a percentage of savings, sometimes with additional spend-based or usage-based fees |
Enterprise tools such as nOps, ProsperOps, and Spot by Flexera focus heavily on rate optimization: lowering what you pay for compute through commitments and purchasing strategies. Their percentage-of-savings models are designed for FinOps or finance teams at companies with million-dollar cloud spend. The goal of ParkMyAWS is not to replace your commitment strategy. It is to stop paying on-demand rates for non-production runtime you do not need.
Savings estimates currently assume on-demand pricing. If a resource is covered by a Savings Plan or Reserved Instance, your realized incremental savings may be lower. The 30–65% range applies to on-demand non-production compute.
Stop maintaining a scheduler. Start giving non-prod AWS office hours.
Connect your AWS accounts, park idle EC2 and RDS resources, and prove the savings from one dashboard.
No credit card required. Cancel anytime. Flat monthly pricing from €39.