Visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time
Get costs and usage information, and business insights with preconfigured views.
Deep dive into you cost and usage data with filtering and grouping.
Create a costs and usage forecast
for a future time range for your report.
Create, save, and share custom reports to explore different sets of data.
AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. Get started quickly by creating custom reports that analyze cost and usage data. Analyze your data at a high level [for example, total costs and usage across all accounts] or dive deeper
into your cost and usage data to identify trends, pinpoint cost drivers, and detect anomalies.
How it works
You can enable Cost Explorer for your account using this procedure on the Billing and Cost Management console. You can't enable Cost Explorer using the API. After you enable Cost Explorer, AWS prepares the data about your costs for the current month and the last 12 months, and then calculates the forecast for the next 12 months. The current month's data is available for viewing in about 24 hours. The rest of your data takes a few days longer. Cost Explorer updates your cost data at least once every 24 hours.
Use cases
Build custom applications
Directly access the interactive, ad-hoc analytics engine that powers AWS Cost Explorer. The Cost Explorer API allows you to programmatically query your cost and usage data.
Use granular filtering
AWS Cost Explorer helps you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over a daily or monthly granularity. You can also access your data with
further granularity by enabling hourly and resource level granularity.
Forecasting with Cost Explorer
You create a forecast by selecting a future time range for your report. You can use a forecast to estimate your AWS bill and set alarms and budgets for based on predictions.
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How to get started
Get started today
Log in to the AWS Cost Management Console to get started with AWS Cost Explorer.
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Dive deeper
See how to get started with AWS Cost Explorer with our how-to guides.
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This section provides information that you need to get started with using the Billing console.
Topics
- Step 1: Sign up for AWS
- Step 2: Attach the required IAM policy to an IAM identity
- Step 3: Review your bills and usage
- Step 4: Download or print your bill
- Step 5: Learn more about the Billing features
- What do I do next?
Step 1: Sign up for AWS
If you're new to AWS, create an AWS account. For more information, see Getting Started with AWS.
Step 2: Attach the required IAM policy to an IAM identity
AWS account owners can delegate access to specific IAM users who need to view or manage the Billing data for an AWS account. To start activating access to the Billing console and AWS Cost Management console, see IAM tutorial: Delegate access to the billing console in the IAM User Guide.
For detailed information about IAM policies specific for Billing, see Using identity-based policies [IAM policies] for AWS Billing.
To reference a list of Billing policy examples, see AWS Billing policy examples.
Step 3: Review your bills and usage
Use features in the Billing console to view your current AWS charges and AWS usage.
To open the Billing console and view your usage and charges
Sign into the AWS Management Console and open the Billing console at //console.aws.amazon.com/billing/.
Choose Bills to see details about your current charges.
Choose Payments to see your historical payment transactions.
Choose AWS Cost and Usage Reports to see reports that break down your costs.
For more information about setting up and using AWS Cost and Usage Reports, see the AWS Cost and Usage Reports User Guide.
Step 4: Download or print your bill
AWS Billing closes the billing period at midnight on the last day of each month and calculates your bill. Most bills are ready for you to download by the seventh accounting day of the month.
To download your bill
Sign into the AWS Management Console and open the Billing console at //console.aws.amazon.com/billing/.
On the navigation pane, choose Bills.
For Date, choose the month of the bill you want to work with.
Choose Download CSV to download a comma-separated variable file or choose Print.
Step 5: Learn more about the Billing features
Understand the features available to you in the Billing console.
Account settings: Managing your account
AWS Free Tier: Using the AWS Free Tier
Payments: Managing Your Payments
Viewing your bills: Viewing your bill
AWS Cost Categories: Managing your costs with AWS Cost Categories
Cost Allocation Tags: Using Cost Allocation Tags
AWS Purchase Orders: Managing your purchase orders
AWS Cost and Usage Reports: Using AWS Cost and Usage Reports
Using AWS CloudTrail: Logging Billing and Cost Management API calls with AWS CloudTrail
Consolidated billing: Consolidated billing for AWS Organizations
What do I do next?
Now that you can view and pay your AWS bill, you're ready to use the features available to you. The rest of this guide helps you navigate your journey using the console.
Optimize your spending using AWS Cost Management features
Use the AWS Cost Management features to budget and forecast costs so you can optimize your AWS spends and reduce your overall AWS bill. Combine and use the Billing console resources to manage your payments, while using AWS Cost Management features to optimize your future costs.
For more information about AWS Cost Management features, see the AWS Cost Management User Guide.
Using the Billing and Cost Management API
Use the AWS Billing and Cost Management API Reference to programmatically use some AWS Cost Management features.
Learn more
You can find more information about Billing features including presentations, virtual workshops, and blog posts on the marketing page Cloud Financial Management with AWS.
You can find virtual workshops by choosing the Services drop-down and selecting your feature.
Get help
If you have questions about any Billing features, there are many resources available for you. To learn more, see Getting help with AWS Billing and Cost Management.