Cost Explorer

aws/cost-management aws/billing

💡 Definition

AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time.

🔑 Key Concepts

Visualization: Graphs and charts showing spend over time (daily/monthly).
Filtering: Drill down by Service (e.g., EC2), Region, Tag (e.g., Project:Alpha), or Instance Type.
Forecasting: Predicts future costs for up to 12 months based on historical data.
Recommendations: Provides savings recommendations for RIs and Savings Plans.

⚙️ How it Works

Enable: Must be enabled in the Billing Console (takes 24 hours to populate).
Analyze: Use the dashboard to create custom reports (e.g., "Show me EC2 spend in us-east-1").
Save Reports: Save common views for quick access.

🎯 Use Cases

Trend Analysis: "Why did my bill go up last month?"
Cost Allocation: "How much is the Marketing team spending vs Engineering?" (Using Tags).
Capacity Planning: Using forecasts to estimate future budget needs.

💰 Pricing Model

Free: Included with the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
API: Accessing Cost Explorer data programmatically costs $0.01 per request.

📝 Exam Tips (CLF-C02)

Key keyword: "Visualize", "Analyze", "Trend", "Forecast".
Go-to tool for deep diving into past and future costs.
Requires Tags to filter costs by project/team efficiently.

See Also: * AWS Budgets * Billing Dashboard