Netflix? More like Netfix – world’s most popular streaming service is tied at the neck with its biggest rival, and doesn’t even know how much it spends on cloud computing

• AWS is Netflix’s only cloud computing platform
• But AWS is also part of Amazon, which owns Amazon Prime Video, a huge rival to Netflix
• Netflix engineers have been struggling to keep track of how much resources they use on AWS

Netflix, the world’s most popular streaming platform, may dominate home entertainment, but it’s struggling to manage one of its biggest operational challenges: cloud computing costs.

Despite its tech-forward image, Netflix has admitted it doesn’t fully know how much it spends on the cloud, an oversight made even more surprising given that its cloud provider, AWS, is part of Amazon – owner of Prime Video, one of Netflix’s largest competitors.

Relying on AWS for compute, storage, and networking, Netflix’s cloud infrastructure supports its global streaming service. Engineering teams use self-service tools to create and deploy applications, generating vast amounts of data. However, the complexity of this ecosystem makes it difficult for Netflix to understand exactly how resources are used and how costs accumulate.

Keeping its content flowing

The Platform Data Science Engineering (DSE) team at Netflix has taken on the task of untangling this problem. The team’s mission is to help the company’s engineers understand resource usage, efficiency, and associated costs.

Yet, as Netflix acknowledged in a recent blog post, its cloud cost management is still a work in progress.

To address the challenges it finds itself facing, Netflix has developed two tools: Foundational Platform Data (FPD) and Cloud Efficiency Analytics (CEA). FPD provides a centralized data layer with a standardized model, aggregating data from applications like Apache Spark. CEA builds on this by applying business logic to generate cost and ownership attribution, providing insights into efficiency and usage patterns.

The hurdles are significant. Netflix’s sprawling infrastructure includes services with multiple owners, varying cost heuristics, and multi-tenant platforms that complicate tracking.

Data delays and platform-specific customizations add a further layer of complexity. Regular audits and data transformations are necessary to maintain accuracy, but the company admits it has yet to achieve full visibility into its cloud spending.

Looking ahead, Netflix says it plans to expand its tools and incorporate predictive analytics and machine learning to optimize usage and detect cost anomalies.

While the company works to refine its approach, its situation highlights a striking irony: the world’s most popular streaming platform relies on its rival’s technology to deliver its own service, yet it is still figuring out the true cost of keeping its content flowing.

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Wayne Williams is a freelancer writing news for TechRadar Pro. He has been writing about computers, technology, and the web for 30 years. In that time he wrote for most of the UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.