Cost Strategy

Detailed Cost Analysis with AWS Cost and Usage Report - Athena Queries and Visualization Pipelines

Analyze resource-level detailed cost data with SQL in Athena and visualize it with QuickSight. This article covers CUR 2.0 data exports and how to build an analytics foundation.

約 3 分で読めます

Overview of CUR

The Cost and Usage Report (CUR) provides the most granular cost data available in AWS. While Cost Explorer offers an aggregated view, CUR delivers line-item data down to the resource ID level, delivered to S3. You can analyze costs for each individual EC2 instance, S3 bucket, and Lambda function separately.

Athena Queries and Visualization

By delivering CUR in Parquet format to S3 and creating tables with a Glue Crawler, you can run SQL queries in Athena. Queries such as "top 10 most expensive EC2 instances last month," "total cost of untagged resources," and "effective discount rate of Savings Plans" enable detailed analysis that goes beyond what Cost Explorer can provide. Build dashboards in QuickSight using Athena as a data source to automatically share cost reports broken down by team or project.

CUR 2.0 and Data Exports

CUR 2.0 (Data Exports) evolves the traditional CUR by offering Parquet output, column selection, and SQL-based filtering. By exporting only the columns you need, you can reduce both S3 storage volume and Athena scan costs. Use resource-level line items to identify costs for individual EC2 instances and S3 buckets, and track costs for untagged resources. Analyze Savings Plans and RI utilization (coverage, utilization rate, effective pricing) from CUR columns to optimize purchasing options. When you output CUR from an Organizations consolidated billing account, you can analyze costs for all member accounts in a single report. For a systematic study of CUR from basics to advanced topics, check out books on Amazon.

Building a CUR Analytics Foundation

Deliver CUR to S3 in Parquet format and create tables with a Glue Crawler to run SQL queries in Athena. Build dashboards in QuickSight to visualize cost trends by service, cost allocation by tag, and Savings Plans coverage. In large-scale environments, CUR data can reach several GB per month, so use S3 lifecycle rules to transition older reports to Glacier. Optimize Athena query costs with Parquet format and partitioning (year/month) to avoid full scans. CUDOS (Cost and Usage Dashboards Operations Solution) is a QuickSight dashboard template provided by AWS that lets you rapidly build a CUR analytics foundation.

CUR Pricing

Generating CUR and delivering it to S3 is free. Costs are incurred for S3 storage and Athena query charges. CUR data volume scales with the number of resources in your account, ranging from several GB to tens of GB per month in large environments. Athena queries cost approximately $5.00 per TB scanned, and Parquet format with columnar partitioning can significantly reduce scan volume. QuickSight SPICE storage includes 10 GB per Author, with additional storage at approximately $0.25 per GB per month.

Summary

CUR is a report that provides resource-level detailed cost data. Use CUR 2.0's column selection and SQL filtering to efficiently export data, then run SQL queries in Athena. Build custom dashboards in QuickSight to achieve advanced cost analysis including Savings Plans coverage and RI utilization.

Related Services

AWS Cost and Usage ReportA reporting service that delivers detailed AWS cost and usage data to S3Amazon AthenaA serverless query service that lets you analyze data in S3 using standard SQLAmazon QuickAn agentic digital workspace that handles everything from answering questions to executing actions

Related Articles

Visualizing and Analyzing Costs with AWS Cost Explorer - Tag Strategy and Savings PlansVisualize AWS spending with cost analysis by service, account, and tag, plus ML-based anomaly detection and cost forecasting. Learn how to optimize costs using Reserved Instance and Savings Plans purchase recommendations.Cost Management with AWS Budgets - Budget Alerts and Automated ActionsSet alerts on both actual and forecasted values, and use Budget Actions to automatically apply IAM policies or stop instances. Integrate with Slack to raise cost awareness across the team.BI Dashboard Visualization - Building a Data-Driven Decision Platform with Amazon QuickSightExplains how to build interactive BI dashboards with Amazon QuickSight and a serverless data analytics platform with Athena integration. Covers high-speed visualization with the SPICE engine and practical methods for sharing insights across the organization.

More on This Topic

Inside AWS Pricing - How Per-Second, Per-Millisecond, and Per-Request Billing Actually WorksDiscover how AWS's diverse billing granularities, including EC2's per-second billing, Lambda's per-millisecond billing, and S3's per-request billing, are measured, aggregated, and invoiced through the metering system.90% of AWS Is Born from Customer Feedback - Working Backwards and Customer-Driven InnovationWe explain how the Working Backwards process and the Customer Obsession principle shape AWS service development. Learn about the innovation mechanism that starts with PR/FAQ documents and the process for incorporating customer feedback.AWS's Culture of Price Reductions - The Flywheel and Economies of Scale Behind 100+ Price Cuts Since 2006This article analyzes AWS's culture of passing scale benefits on to customers through price reductions, examining the economies of scale, hardware generation transitions, and competitive strategy behind it, with examples of major past price cuts and their impact.Why AWS Pricing Is So Complex - The Economics and Game Theory Behind Pay-As-You-GoWe break down the three-tier pricing structure of On-Demand, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instances through the lens of airline yield management and demand forecasting economics, explaining the rational reasons behind the complexity of AWS pricing.Cost Management with AWS Budgets - Budget Alerts and Automated ActionsSet alerts on both actual and forecasted values, and use Budget Actions to automatically apply IAM policies or stop instances. Integrate with Slack to raise cost awareness across the team.Cloud Cost Budget Management - Spending Controls and Alerts with AWS BudgetsLearn how to set budgets, configure cost alerts, and automate actions with AWS Budgets. This article covers choosing budget types, comparing Budgets with Cost Explorer, and managing organization-wide budgets through Organizations integration.Why CloudWatch Logs Costs More Than You Expect - The Cost Structure of Ingestion, Storage, and AnalysisThis article explains the pricing structure where CloudWatch Logs ingestion costs over 20 times more than storage, the cost explosions caused by VPC Flow Logs and Lambda logs, and optimization strategies using the Infrequent Access class and S3 export.Resource Optimization with AWS Compute Optimizer - Instance RightsizingAnalyze CloudWatch metrics with ML to generate rightsizing recommendations for EC2, Lambda, EBS, and ECS Fargate. Learn about Graviton migration recommendations and improving accuracy with enhanced metrics.

Similar Articles and Services

Cost Visualization and Analysis - Optimizing Cloud Spending with AWS Cost ExplorerLearn how to visualize and analyze cloud costs using AWS Cost Explorer. Covers usage monitoring with CloudWatch metrics integration and practical approaches to cost optimization.Amazon AthenaA serverless analytics service that lets you run standard SQL queries against data stored in S3, enabling petabyte-scale data analysis with pay-per-query pricing and no infrastructure managementBI Dashboard Visualization - Building a Data-Driven Decision Platform with Amazon QuickSightExplains how to build interactive BI dashboards with Amazon QuickSight and a serverless data analytics platform with Athena integration. Covers high-speed visualization with the SPICE engine and practical methods for sharing insights across the organization.