AWS Cost Explorer is a powerful, user-friendly interface that allows you to **visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time**. It's the primary tool within the AWS Cost Management suite, designed to help you gain visibility into your cloud spending without requiring complex setup or third-party tools.
The service is completely **free to use**—you only pay for the underlying AWS resources you consume and for any data downloads via the API.
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## Key Features Detailed
### 1. Visualize, Understand, and Manage AWS Costs and Usage Over Time
Cost Explorer provides interactive graphs and tables that transform raw billing data into actionable insights. You can:
- **Spot trends and patterns** through day-over-day, month-over-month, and year-over-year analysis
- **Identify cost drivers** by visualizing which services, regions, or accounts contribute most to your bill
- **Detect anomalies**—sudden, unexpected increases in spending can be quickly identified and investigated
The interface allows you to toggle between different visualizations (line charts, bar charts, stacked area charts) to better understand your spending patterns.
### 2. Creating Custom Reports That Analyze Cost and Usage Data
Cost Explorer comes with **preconfigured default reports** to get you started quickly:
| Default Report | Purpose |
|----------------|---------|
| **Monthly Costs by AWS Service** | Visualizes costs for top 5 cost-accruing services with detailed breakdown of all services |
| **Monthly Spend by Linked Account** | Shows spend grouped by member accounts in AWS Organizations |
| **Daily Costs** | Tracks day-to-day spending patterns |
| **EC2 Running Hours Costs** | Monitors EC2 compute costs and usage |
Beyond defaults, you can **create, save, and share custom reports** by applying filters and groupings that matter to your business. For example, you could create a report showing:
- Cost by `Service` + `Region` for a specific time period
- Usage by `Instance Type` + `Purchase Option` (On-Demand vs. Spot vs. Reserved)
- Cost allocated to specific teams using `Cost Allocation Tags`
These saved reports can be shared across your organization, ensuring finance, engineering, and leadership teams have consistent visibility.
### 3. Analyze Data at High Level: Total Costs and Usage Across All Accounts
For organizations with multiple AWS accounts (especially those using AWS Organizations), Cost Explorer provides a **payer account view** that aggregates spending across all linked accounts. You can:
- View **total monthly spend** across your entire organization
- **Group by linked account** to see which business units or teams are driving costs
- Filter to specific accounts, services, or regions to isolate spending
This high-level view is essential for **FinOps practices**, enabling financial accountability and helping leadership understand cloud spend at a glance.
### 4. Monthly, Hourly, and Resource-Level Granularity
Cost Explorer supports multiple levels of data granularity to suit different analysis needs:
| Granularity Level | Availability | Use Case |
|-------------------|--------------|----------|
| **Monthly** | Up to 38 months of history | Long-term trend analysis, year-over-year comparisons |
| **Daily** | Up to 12 months | Month-over-month tracking, weekly patterns |
| **Hourly** | Last 14 days | Peak hour identification, Savings Plan commitment planning |
| **Resource-level (Daily)** | Last 14 days | Identify cost drivers at individual resource level (e.g., specific EC2 instances, S3 buckets) |
| **EC2 Resource-level (Hourly)** | Last 14 days | Granular EC2 instance cost tracking by the hour |
**How to Enable Granular Data**:
1. Open Billing and Cost Management console → **Cost Management preferences**
2. Select **Multi-year data at monthly granularity** (for up to 38 months of history)
3. Select **Hourly granularity** options:
- *Cost and usage data for all AWS services at hourly granularity*
- *EC2-Instances resource-level data* (for hourly instance-level tracking)
4. Select **Resource-level data at daily granularity** and choose specific services from the dropdown (ranked by costliest services used in last 6 months)
> **Note:** Changes to data settings can take up to 48 hours to reflect, and you cannot make additional changes during that window.
**Pricing for hourly granularity:** $0.01 per 1,000 usage records monthly (a usage record is one line item for a specific resource and usage type—for example, one EC2 instance running for 24 hours generates 24 distinct usage records).
### 5. Choose an Optimal Savings Plan
Cost Explorer provides two dedicated reports to help you optimize with **Savings Plans** (a flexible pricing model offering up to 72% savings over On-Demand):
#### Savings Plans Utilization Report
Visualizes how well you're using your committed Savings Plans. You can set a **custom utilization target** (e.g., 80%) and identify underutilized plans that may need adjustment.
#### Savings Plans Coverage Report
Shows what percentage of your eligible compute usage is covered by Savings Plans versus running On-Demand. This helps you identify **coverage gaps** where additional Savings Plans could generate savings.
**How Cost Explorer Helps You Purchase Savings Plans**:
- Based on your historical usage patterns, Cost Explorer provides **personalized recommendations**
- You can filter recommendations by term (1-year or 3-year), payment option (All Upfront, Partial Upfront, No Upfront), and region
- The interface guides you through the purchase process directly
Similarly, Cost Explorer includes **Reserved Instance (RI) reports** for utilization and coverage, helping you optimize existing RI commitments.
### 6. Forecast Usage Up to 18 Months Based on Previous Usage
Cost Explorer's **forecasting capability** uses machine learning algorithms trained on your historical cost and usage data to predict future spending.
| Forecast Feature | Details |
|------------------|---------|
| **Maximum forecast horizon** | **18 months** (announced as enhanced capability) |
| **Granularity options** | Daily (up to 3 months) or Monthly (up to 18 months) |
| **Metrics forecasted** | Usage Quantity, Normalized Usage Amount |
| **Update frequency** | At least every 24 hours |
**What you can do with forecasts**:
- **Estimate your future AWS bill** for financial planning and budgeting
- **Set proactive alerts** using AWS Budgets (e.g., alert when forecasted spend exceeds a threshold)
- **Plan capacity purchases** for Reserved Instances or Savings Plans based on predicted usage
- **Identify seasonal patterns** that may require scaling adjustments
**Using the Forecast API** (Programmatic Access):
```python
# Example using boto3
response = client.get_usage_forecast(
TimePeriod={
'Start': '2026-05-01',
'End': '2026-10-01'
},
Metric='USAGE_QUANTITY',
Granularity='MONTHLY',
Filter={
'Dimensions': {
'Key': 'SERVICE',
'Values': ['AmazonEC2']
}
}
)
```
**AI-Powered Forecast Explanations** (Preview):
Cost Explorer can now provide **explainable AI insights** that tell you *why* your forecast changed—for example, identifying that a specific service or account drove an unexpected increase. This transparency helps you trust and act on the forecast data.
> **Note:** To enable forecasting, you must first enable Cost Explorer in your account. The current month's data is available in about 24 hours, and historical data takes a few days longer.
---
## Quick Reference Summary
| Feature | Capability |
|---------|------------|
| **Historical data** | Up to 38 months at monthly granularity |
| **Hourly data** | Last 14 days for all services or EC2 resources |
| **Resource-level data** | Daily for all services (last 14 days) |
| **Forecast horizon** | Up to 18 months (Monthly) or 3 months (Daily) |
| **Savings Plans analysis** | Utilization and Coverage reports with recommendations |
| **Default reports** | Monthly by Service, by Account, Daily Costs, EC2 Running Hours |
| **API access** | Full programmatic query capability |
| **Natural language queries** | Via Amazon Q Developer integration |
---
## Getting Started
1. Enable Cost Explorer in the **Billing and Cost Management console** (cannot be enabled via API)
2. Wait 24-48 hours for data to populate
3. Configure **Cost Management preferences** for granular and multi-year data
4. Explore default reports or create custom views
5. Set up **forecasts** and **Savings Plans recommendations** for optimization
6. Use **API access** to automate reporting for stakeholders
Cost Explorer is an essential tool for any organization serious about **FinOps**—providing the visibility, forecasting, and optimization guidance needed to control cloud costs effectively.
