Overview
AWS Cost Explorer lets you explore your AWS costs and usage at both a high level and at a detailed level of analysis, and empowering you to dive deeper using several filtering dimensions (e.g., AWS Service, Region, Linked Account). You cannot use Cost Explorer to share the reserved EC2 instances amongst multiple AWS accounts.
Customers can receive Savings Plan recommendations at the member (linked) account level in addition to the existing AWS organization-level recommendations in AWS Cost Explorer.
Service Overview:
AWS Cost Explorer is a cost management tool provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables users to visualize, understand, and manage their AWS spending. It provides insights into AWS usage and costs, helping users optimize their cloud spending and make informed decisions about resource allocation and budgeting.
Key Features:
- Cost Visualization: Cost Explorer offers interactive charts, graphs, and tables that visualize AWS usage and costs over time, allowing users to analyze spending trends, identify cost drivers, and track cost-saving opportunities.
- Customizable Reports: Cost Explorer provides predefined reports and allows users to create custom reports based on their specific requirements, filtering data by service, region, tag, instance type, and other dimensions.
- Forecasting: Cost Explorer offers cost forecasting capabilities that predict future AWS spending based on historical usage patterns, enabling users to anticipate costs and budget effectively.
- Cost Anomaly Detection: Cost Explorer automatically identifies and alerts users to significant changes or anomalies in AWS spending, helping to detect unexpected cost increases or optimization opportunities.
- Budget Management: Cost Explorer allows users to set up and manage budgets for their AWS spending, specifying budget thresholds, alert notifications, and actions to take when budgets are exceeded.
- Recommendations: Cost Explorer provides cost optimization recommendations based on AWS best practices and usage patterns, suggesting ways to reduce costs, such as rightsizing instances, purchasing reserved capacity, or leveraging spot instances.
- Integration with Cost & Usage Reports: Cost Explorer integrates with AWS Cost & Usage Reports, allowing users to access detailed cost and usage data for granular analysis and reporting.
- API Access: Cost Explorer provides programmatic access via APIs, enabling users to retrieve cost and usage data programmatically and integrate with third-party tools and services.
How It Works:
- Data Collection: Cost Explorer collects cost and usage data from AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and others, aggregating usage and cost information at the account and resource level.
- Visualization: Cost Explorer presents cost and usage data in the form of interactive charts, graphs, and tables, allowing users to explore and analyze spending patterns, trends, and outliers.
- Reporting: Users can generate predefined or custom reports using Cost Explorer, applying filters, groupings, and date ranges to analyze cost and usage data according to their specific needs.
- Budgeting: Cost Explorer enables users to set up and manage budgets for their AWS spending, defining budget thresholds, alert notifications, and actions to take when budgets are exceeded.
- Forecasting: Cost Explorer offers cost forecasting capabilities that predict future AWS spending based on historical usage data, helping users anticipate costs and plan budgets more effectively.
- Optimization Recommendations: Cost Explorer provides cost optimization recommendations based on AWS best practices and usage patterns, suggesting ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
- Alerts and Notifications: Cost Explorer alerts users to significant changes or anomalies in AWS spending, such as cost increases or budget overruns, enabling proactive cost management and optimization.
Benefits:
- Visibility: Cost Explorer provides visibility into AWS spending, allowing users to understand their cloud costs, identify cost drivers, and track spending trends over time.
- Control: Cost Explorer enables users to set budgets, monitor spending, and take proactive actions to control and optimize their AWS costs, helping to prevent cost overruns and budget surprises.
- Optimization: Cost Explorer offers cost optimization recommendations and insights, helping users identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and maximize ROI on their AWS investments.
- Forecasting: Cost Explorer helps users forecast future AWS spending based on historical usage patterns, enabling better budget planning and resource allocation.
- Automation: Cost Explorer integrates with AWS services and APIs, enabling users to automate cost analysis, budgeting, and optimization processes, improving efficiency and scalability.
Use Cases:
- Cost Management: Organizations use Cost Explorer to monitor and manage their AWS spending, track costs by service, region, or tag, and identify opportunities to optimize costs and improve efficiency.
- Budgeting and Forecasting: Teams use Cost Explorer to set up and manage budgets for their AWS spending, forecast future costs, and plan budgets effectively to align with business goals and priorities.
- Cost Optimization: Users leverage Cost Explorer to identify cost optimization opportunities, such as rightsizing instances, leveraging reserved capacity, or optimizing storage usage, to reduce costs and improve ROI.
- Anomaly Detection: Cost Explorer helps users detect anomalies or unexpected changes in AWS spending, such as sudden cost increases or unusual usage patterns, enabling proactive cost management and investigation.
- Resource Tagging: Organizations use Cost Explorer to analyze costs by resource tags, such as environment, department, or project, enabling cost allocation and chargeback for better cost accountability and transparency.
AWS Cost Explorer empowers users to visualize, understand, and manage their AWS spending effectively, enabling proactive cost management, optimization, and budgeting in the AWS Cloud.