Cost Management Tools
Cost Explorer, Budgets, CUR, cost allocation tags, and Compute Optimizer — the right tool for every cost question.
The cost toolbox
Visualize and analyze past and current spend with charts, filters, and 12-month forecasts. "Which service cost the most last quarter?"
Set thresholds and get alerts (or trigger actions) when actual or forecasted cost/usage exceeds them. "Email me if we're on track to exceed $1,000."
The most detailed raw billing data, delivered to S3 for analysis in Athena/QuickSight.
Key-value labels (e.g., project:alpha) that let you break down the bill by team, project, or environment.
ML-based right-sizing recommendations for EC2, EBS, and Lambda.
The billing console shows invoices, payment methods, and the free-tier usage tracker.
Match the verb: analyze/visualize past costs → Cost Explorer; alert on future overspend → Budgets; most granular data → CUR; split costs by department → cost allocation tags; right-size instances → Compute Optimizer (or Trusted Advisor's cost checks).
Cost Explorer is your bank statement with charts. Budgets is the text alert when your balance runs low. The CUR is the itemized receipt for every penny. Tags are writing a project name on every receipt so accounting can sort them.
A company wants an automatic email alert when its monthly AWS spend is FORECAST to exceed $5,000. Which tool provides this?