Cost Explorer
Cost Explorer
SkySaver’s Cost Explorer provides powerful tools for analyzing and understanding your AWS spending. Visualize costs by service, account, region, or custom tags to identify optimization opportunities.
Overview
Cost Explorer helps you answer questions like:
- Where is my money going?
- Which services cost the most?
- How do costs vary by account or region?
- Are there unexpected spending spikes?
- What savings opportunities exist?
Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Interactive Charts | Visualize spending trends over time |
| Breakdowns | Analyze costs by service, account, region, or tag |
| Filtering | Focus on specific dimensions |
| Date Ranges | Compare periods and spot trends |
| Recommendations | View rightsizing and savings suggestions |
| Export | Download data for further analysis |
Accessing Cost Explorer
Navigate to Cost Explorer from the main menu. The page loads with default views showing your current month’s spending.
Quick Views
Cost Explorer provides pre-configured views for common analyses:
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
| Current Month | This month’s spending to date |
| Last Month | Previous month’s complete spending |
| Last 3 Months | Quarterly trend |
| Year to Date | Annual spending |
Cost Analysis Workflow
graph LR
A[Select Date Range] --> B[Apply Filters]
B --> C[Choose Breakdown]
C --> D[Analyze Data]
D --> E[Export or Act]- Select Date Range - Choose the period to analyze
- Apply Filters - Narrow down to specific services, accounts, or tags
- Choose Breakdown - Group costs by dimension
- Analyze Data - Review charts and tables
- Export or Act - Download data or take optimization actions
Understanding Your Costs
Top Services
View which AWS services consume the most budget:
- EC2 (compute)
- RDS (databases)
- S3 (storage)
- Lambda (serverless)
- Data Transfer
Account Distribution
For multi-account setups, see spending by account to identify:
- Production vs. development costs
- Team or project allocations
- Accounts with unusual spending
Regional Costs
Understand geographic distribution:
- Primary region spending
- Cross-region data transfer
- Regional pricing differences
Cost Metrics
| Metric | Description | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Unblended | Actual usage costs | Day-to-day tracking |
| Blended | Averaged costs (consolidated billing) | Organization-wide views |
In This Section
- Dashboard Widgets - Understanding dashboard cost widgets
- Query Builder - Building custom cost queries
- Cost Allocation Tags - Tag-based cost breakdown
Prerequisites
To use Cost Explorer:
- AWS Cost Explorer enabled - Activate in your AWS Billing Console
- IAM permissions - SkySaver role needs Cost Explorer API access
- Connected accounts - At least one AWS account configured
See AWS Account Setup for configuration details.
Related Topics
- Cost Explorer Automation - How cost data is collected
- Dashboard - Main dashboard with cost widgets