AWS Cost Explorer
Visualise, analyse, and forecast your AWS spend.
❓ What is it?
The console tool for exploring historical cost and usage — filter and group by service, account, region, or tag; view trends; and see ML-powered forecasts of the coming months.
💡 Why does it exist?
AI spend is spiky (a training run, a token surge) and easy to misattribute. Seeing WHERE money goes — per team, per model, per environment via tags — is the first step of every cost conversation.
⏱️ When should you use it?
Use it to investigate "why did the bill jump" (group by service → usage type), to compare Bedrock token spend across months, and to size Savings Plan commitments from steady baselines.
🗺️ Where does it fit?
In the billing/management layer: reads from your cost data automatically; pairs with cost-allocation tags on SageMaker/Bedrock resources for per-project attribution.
🔌 How do you integrate it?
Activate cost-allocation tags, open Cost Explorer, group by tag/service, save reports, and check the forecast band before commitments; use hourly granularity for training-job spikes.
🧩 Commonly integrated with
🎯 Exam angle (AIF-C01)
- Cost Explorer ANALYSES past/forecast spend; Budgets ALERTS on thresholds; Pricing Calculator ESTIMATES before you build. Three tools, three tenses.
- Tagging is the prerequisite for per-model/per-team AI cost attribution.