Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers the ability to filter out instance details from the DescribeAutoScalingGroups API

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now offers the ability to filter out instance details from the DescribeAutoScalingGroups API with a new parameter. With IncludeInstances set to false, you can quickly access metadata and configurations about your Auto Scaling Groups without the overhead of instance details, reducing the size of the API response and improving API response time.

The new parameter is available in all commercial AWS Regions, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, see the EC2 Auto Scaling API Reference.