AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost Explorer is a UI-based tool within Amazon Web Services that lets users analyze and visualize their costs and usage over time, through graphs, cost and usage reports, and Reserved Instance reports.
AI Practitioner focus
- Use Cost Explorer to analyze and forecast model-training, endpoint, provisioned-capacity, storage, and token-related spend by service, account, tag, or time.
- It supports cost/value decisions but does not set hard limits; pair it with AWS Budgets for alerts and with application metrics such as cost per interaction and ROI.
Key points
- Accessed from the Billing and Cost Management console; the first time a user signs up, it walks through the console’s main parts.
- Prepares cost and usage data, displaying up to 12 months of historical data (less if the account is newer), the current month’s data, and a forecast for the next 12 months.
- The two default report types provided are:
- Cost and Usage Reports
- Reserved Instance Reports
- Offers preconfigured views for cost distribution by service, by linked account, or daily spend over the last three months.
- Lets users download or bookmark reports for later analysis.
- Spend data becomes visible within 24 hours of first launching Cost Explorer.
- Also helps identify rightsizing opportunities for Amazon EC2 instances as part of managing and controlling costs.
- Distinct from AWS Budgets, which sends proactive alerts when thresholds are crossed, and from AWS Cost and Usage Report, which exports the most granular line-item billing data — Cost Explorer’s role is ad-hoc graphical visualization and forecasting only.