Reel · Terraform & Infra · Oct 15, 2026
One debug line. $1.1 million in logs.
In short
At one company, a well-intentioned debug line echoed everything into CloudWatch. Per a QCon 2024 talk by Erik Peterson (CloudZero), that single function cost $1.1 million in log writes since it was deployed. Log volume is cost, and debug logging left on in production is the quiet one. Log a summary, not the payload, and set a log-budget alert.
Label from the original post: Screens are illustrations. AI avatar and AI voice.
Checklist: what to do about it
- Find your top 5 log groups or services by ingest.
- Check how much of your production log volume is DEBUG.
- Turn debug logging off in production by default, with a runtime switch to turn it on briefly.
- Log a summary, not the whole request or event payload.
- Set a log-budget alert per service (ingest per day).
- Review any new log line in a hot path before it ships.
- Never log secrets or personal data.
Sources
Source: "Million Dollar Lines of Code", Erik Peterson, QCon, March 2024 (InfoQ).