AWS Cost Explorer Popularsince 2014
A service that visualizes and analyzes your AWS costs and usage to identify optimization opportunities
What It Does
AWS Cost Explorer visualizes your AWS spending and usage through graphs and tables, letting you analyze cost trends. You can break down costs by service, account, region, tag, and more. It shows past cost trends and provides cost forecasts for the months ahead.
Use Cases
It is used for monthly cost reviews to analyze which services increased in cost compared to the previous month, and for aggregating costs by project using tag-based allocation. It is also used to review Savings Plans and Reserved Instance purchase recommendations and evaluate cost savings through long-term discounts.
Everyday Analogy
Think of it like a personal finance app. It displays your monthly expenses in categories like food, utilities, and phone bills, letting you spot trends like 'food spending went up 20% from last month' or 'phone bills stay consistent every month.' Cost Explorer is the AWS equivalent - it shows you how much you're spending on each service and points out where you can save.
What Is Cost Explorer?
AWS Cost Explorer is a service for visualizing and analyzing your AWS spending. Once you start using AWS, you naturally want to know 'How much am I spending this month?' and 'Which service costs the most?' Cost Explorer answers these questions by displaying cost breakdowns, trends, and forecasts in easy-to-read graphs.
Visualizing and Analyzing Costs
Cost Explorer lets you filter and group costs along various dimensions. Viewing by service shows whether EC2 or S3 accounts for most of your spending. Viewing by region lets you compare costs between Tokyo and Virginia. Viewing by tag enables cost allocation by project or department. You can track cost trends at daily or monthly granularity, helping you catch unusual cost increases early. A finer hourly granularity is also available, but it has to be enabled beforehand, its lookback window is limited, and it incurs an additional charge.
Cost Forecasting and Savings Plans Recommendations
Cost Explorer provides cost forecasts for the months ahead based on your historical usage patterns, which is useful for budget planning. It also offers Savings Plans and Reserved Instance purchase recommendations, suggesting optimal discount plans based on your current usage. Each recommendation shows the estimated monthly savings for the plan it suggests, and the amount depends entirely on your own usage, so check the figures on the recommendation screen in the console.
Getting Started
Cost Explorer is accessible from the 'Billing and Cost Management' section of the AWS Management Console. When you access it for the first time and enable it, your historical cost data is automatically loaded. The default view shows cost trends by service, so you can start analyzing costs right away. For more detailed analysis, you can customize filters and grouping conditions to create reports.
Things to Watch Out For
- Cost Explorer data is normally refreshed every 24 hours, so the most recent usage is not reflected immediately (and it can lag further in some cases). If you need real-time cost monitoring, use AWS Budgets alerts alongside it
- Programmatic access via the Cost Explorer API incurs a charge per API request ($0.01 per request) (as of August 2026)
- Cost allocation tags must be activated before you can use tag-based cost analysis. If you need cost management by project or department, plan your tagging strategy in advance
References (Official AWS Resources)
The primary sources for this page are the official AWS website and documentation. Check the official pages below for the latest specifications and pricing.
If this page and the official documentation disagree, treat the official documentation as authoritative.
