AWS Cost Explorer FAQs

Q: What are the benefits of using AWS Cost Explorer?

AWS Cost Explorer lets you explore your AWS costs and usage at both a high level and at a detailed level of analysis, and empowering you to dive deeper using a number of filtering dimensions (e.g., AWS Service, Region, Member Account, etc.) AWS Cost Explorer also gives you access to a set of default reports to help you get started, while also allowing you to create custom reports from scratch.

For more information about the breadth of AWS Cost Explorer features, please click here or refer to the Managing your Usage and Costs user guide.

Q: What kinds of default reports are available?

Cost Explorer supports five default reports through Reports page – monthly cost by service, monthly cost by linked account, Monthly EC2 running hours costs and usage, Daily costs, and AWS Marketplace costs. A Customer can click on any of these reports to open them in Cost Explorer console.

Q: Can I create and save custom AWS Cost Explorer reports?

Yes, you can save your Cost Explorer report along with your filters and group by dimension selections for later use. Your saved reports will appear in Reports page.

Q: Does AWS Cost Explorer support AWS cost and usage forecasts?

Yes, Cost Explorer forecasts your AWS cost and usage by analyzing your historical pattern. Cost Explorer estimates your cost and usage for the next 12 months at monthly granularity and for the next 3 months at daily granularity.

Q: What can I do with the AWS Cost Explorer API?

The AWS Cost Explorer API is the low-latency, ad-hoc query service that powers AWS Cost Explorer, and is accessible via a command-line interface and supported AWS SDKs. Using the AWS Cost Explorer API, you can build custom, interactive cost management applications without having to set up and maintain any additional infrastructure.

The AWS Cost Explorer API incurs a charge of 0.01 per request. Please note that if your result set is paginated each page counts as a separate request.

To learn more about the AWS Cost Explorer API, please reference the technical documentation.