What is AWS Cost Explorer?

Introduction

Amazon Web Services offers over 200 cloud services, including computing power, storage, databases, networking, and more. You can rent these resources on demand and pay only for what you use, which makes your cloud cost differ each month. It fluctuates depending on the resources you use and how you use them. That’s why it is important to take a closer look at your cloud billing and be aware of how you spend your money. AWS offers a Cost Explorer tool to help you do that.

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What is AWS Cost Explorer?

AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize, analyze, and manage your AWS costs and usage. You can see the total costs you spend on AWS services and the total usage across all your accounts through reports and a main graph for visualization. You can also customize reports to help you better understand your AWS spending, enabling you to make informed decisions and optimize your costs.

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Things You Must Know About AWS Cost Explorer

Provides cost and usage visualization and analysis.

Understanding why your cloud costs have increased can be very challenging. AWS Cost Explorer helps you understand that by providing a visual representation of your AWS cost and usage data over time through graphs and tables. This visualization makes the analysis of your data simple and helps you quickly grasp trends and identify patterns. 

You can do customization on reports.

You can create, save, and share custom reports to match your specific needs and preferences. Customize reports by selecting specific parameters such as time frames, services, accounts, regions, usage types, and tags. Custom reports let you analyze your AWS costs and usage better.

Allows you to filter and group your view.

You can view your costs and usage data across different dimensions to give you granular visibility and insights into your expenditures. Filter data by period, member accounts, and services. You can also group your data by accounts and services. This allows you to identify cost drivers, allocate expenses accurately, and manage AWS costs effectively.

Gives you cost and usage forecasting.

AWS Cost Explorer also provides predictions about your future costs and usage based on your past and current costs and usage patterns over specific periods. This can help you to improve cost predictability and maintain financial control in your AWS cloud environments. 

Save your CE view as a CSV

You can also download your Cost Explorer views as CSV files so you can access and analyze your cost and usage data offline, without requiring real-time access to the AWS Management Console. This is particularly useful for scenarios where internet connectivity may be limited.

AWS Cost Explorer offers many advantages that are essential for effective cloud cost management. This tool significantly enhances financial transparency, enables precise cost control, and maximizes the return on investment in AWS cloud services.

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Benefits of Using AWS Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer offers several benefits that enhance cloud cost management and decision-making:

• You can quickly access predefined views that provide instant insights into your costs and usage trends without configuring settings from scratch.
• Through filtering and grouping, you can drill down into the specific aspects of your costs and usage data. By filtering data based on parameters like services, accounts, regions, and tags, and grouping them accordingly, you can gain detailed insights and identify cost drivers more effectively.
• Cost Explorer lets you generate forecasts for future costs and usage based on historical data and current trends.
• You can create customized reports that you can configure with specific filters, groupings, and time ranges to analyze different sets of data comprehensively.
• Finally, your saved reports can also be shared with your team members for collaborative decision-making and ongoing monitoring.

Conclusion

In conclusion, AWS Cost Explorer is a perfect tool for any business that subscribes to Amazon Web Services. By offering comprehensive insights through cost and usage visualization, customizable reporting, and advanced filtering and grouping capabilities, it empowers businesses to manage their AWS expenditures with precision. But if you have adopted a multi-cloud strategy - using cloud services from different cloud service providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), Octo answers your problems.

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