AWS Cost Explorer is a popular tool for tracking usage reporting, but it has limitations when it comes to providing real-time cost visibility. The current billing system updates its data at least once a day, which can lead to unexpected costs and surprises. To overcome this, users need access to the raw data used to create the invoice, known as the Cost and Usage Report (CUR), which can be fed into the Cost Explorer for visualization. However, AWS only refreshes this data file three times a day at most, and there is no guarantee of updates beyond that. Real-time visibility into cloud costs is essential to avoid massive cost spikes and optimize regular cloud bills, but it's just one side of the coin - doing something about it with automation is also necessary for effective cost optimization tactics such as autoscaling, rightsizing, spot instance use, and more.