AWS Cost Explorer

Managing costs effectively is essential for organizations using AWS, and AWS Cost Explorer is a valuable tool that provides insights into usage and costs to facilitate informed decision-making regarding resource optimization and budgeting. It offers a visual representation of AWS usage over time, allowing users to identify patterns, inefficiencies, and spikes by viewing costs by service, region, and linked accounts. Cost allocation tags enable categorization and tracking of costs by specific criteria, enhancing budget allocation and optimization. Users can create custom reports to analyze specific aspects of costs and usage, while the forecasting feature predicts future costs using historical data, aiding in proactive decision-making. AWS Budgets integrates with Cost Explorer to track spending against predefined limits, and the tool also provides insights into Reserved Instances and Savings Plans to optimize purchasing decisions. Additionally, Cost Explorer helps identify unused and underutilized resources, allowing for cost reduction through adjustments like terminating idle instances or deleting unused volumes.