Cost Explorer

🧠 What Is AWS Cost Explorer?¶

AWS Cost Explorer is a free built-in AWS tool that lets you visualize, analyze, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time using interactive graphs, filters, and forecasts.

✅ It helps identify spending trends, anomalies, unused resources, and supports budget planning and cost allocation.

🎯 Why Use AWS Cost Explorer?¶

Benefit	Description
✅ Track costs by service	EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, etc.
✅ Forecast future costs	Up to 12 months using historical trends
✅ Filter and group	By service, region, tag, usage type, account
✅ Identify savings	Show underutilized resources and recommendations
✅ Optimize RI/SP usage	Track Reserved Instances/Savings Plan coverage and utilization
✅ Build custom reports	Save views based on your filters and granularity

📊 What You Can See in Cost Explorer¶

View Type	Description
Daily/Monthly Cost Trends	Breakdown by date and service
Forecasts	Predict future spend based on past usage
RI/SP Reports	Coverage and utilization reports for Reserved Instances
Linked Account Breakdown	For organizations using consolidated billing
Usage Reports	e.g., EC2 hours, GB storage, API calls
Cost by Tag	Analyze costs based on user-defined tags

🧱 Key Features¶

1. Service Filtering¶

Filter usage and costs by:

Service (e.g., EC2, Lambda, S3)
Region (e.g., us-east-1)
Usage type (e.g., EC2 running hours)
Linked account
Tags (e.g., Environment=Prod)

2. Custom Reports¶

You can:

Save filtered views
Set time ranges (up to last 13 months)
Export to CSV

3. Forecasting¶

Cost Explorer uses machine learning to project future costs.
Can forecast monthly spending for up to 12 months.

📦 Example Use Cases¶

Scenario	How Cost Explorer Helps
📈 Spending spike detection	Spot sudden increases in cost by service
🏷️ Chargeback by team	Use cost allocation tags (e.g., Project, Owner)
💸 Idle resource identification	Find low-utilization EC2, EBS, etc.
🧮 Planning with Reserved Instances	Analyze RI usage and plan purchases
🔍 Analyzing S3 cost growth	Filter by S3 service, region, and storage class

⚙️ Cost Explorer Interface Walkthrough¶

Section	Description
Dashboard	Overview with current & forecasted costs
Reports	Default and custom saved reports
Filters Panel	Filter by service, tags, accounts, etc.
Grouping Options	Group by service, tag, usage type
Time Interval	Choose daily or monthly granularity
RI/SP Utilization	Reports on coverage and savings

🔐 Permissions (IAM)¶

To allow a user to access Cost Explorer:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ce:*",
        "aws-portal:ViewBilling",
        "cur:DescribeReportDefinitions"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

🛠️ CLI/SDK Access¶

You can use AWS CLI or SDKs to get cost data programmatically.

Example CLI: Get cost for last 7 days¶

aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=$(date -d '7 days ago' +%F),End=$(date +%F) \
  --granularity DAILY \
  --metrics "UnblendedCost" \
  --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE

📈 Cost Explorer vs. CUR¶

Tool	Use Case
Cost Explorer	Visual reports, dashboards, filtering
Cost and Usage Report (CUR)	Raw detailed cost data, full granularity, stored in S3

Use CUR for external BI tools or custom processing; use Cost Explorer for quick insights and visualization.

💰 Pricing¶

Feature	Cost
Cost Explorer UI	✅ Free
API Access	Free up to 1M requests/month
Forecasting, RI/SP reports	✅ Included

✅ TL;DR Summary¶

Feature	AWS Cost Explorer
Visualization	✅ Yes (charts, tables)
Forecasting	✅ 12 months ahead
Tags, Services, Regions	✅ Filter and group by
Historical Data	✅ 13 months of cost + usage
Permissions Required	IAM policy (`ce:*`)
Pricing	Free (API & UI)
CLI Support	✅ Yes via `aws ce`