Managing cloud costs is a critical skill in any DevOps or cloud engineering role. AWS provides powerful tools to monitor, budget, and optimize cloud spending. In this blog, we’ll explore AWS Cost and Budgeting services that help you keep your cloud bills in check.

AWS Cost Explorer

What it is: A visual tool to analyze your AWS spending over time.

Key Features:

  • Visualize cost trends by service, account, tag, or region
  • Forecast future spend based on usage trends
  • Save and share custom reports 
# Navigate via AWS Console:
Billing Dashboard > Cost Explorer

Pro Tip: Enable hourly or daily granularity for detailed usage patterns.

AWS Budgets

What it is: A customizable service for tracking costs and usage against defined thresholds.

Budget Types:

  • Cost budgets
  • Usage budgets
  • Reservation and Savings Plan budgets

How to use:

# Create from AWS Console:
Billing Dashboard > Budgets > Create Budget

Features:

  • Alerts via email or SNS when thresholds are crossed
  • Integration with AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
  • Can trigger Lambda functions for automation

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection

What it is: An AI-powered service to detect unusual spending patterns.

Steps to configure:

# From AWS Console:
Billing Dashboard > Cost Anomaly Detection > Create Monitor

Benefits:

  • Machine learning-based anomaly detection
  • Notification via Amazon SNS
  • Supports multiple linked accounts

AWS Billing Dashboard

Features:

  • Monthly bill summary
  • Detailed invoice breakdown
  • Credits and refunds overview 
# Access:
AWS Console > Billing Dashboard

Pro Tip: Enable consolidated billing for organizations to simplify multi-account management.

Tagging Best Practices

Use cost allocation tags to organize and filter costs by project, environment, team, or customer.

# Enable and apply tags:
Billing > Cost Allocation Tags > Activate

Tip: Use standardized tags like Project, Owner, Environment for consistency.

Practical Tips to Save Costs

  • Turn off unused EC2 and RDS instances
  • Use Spot Instances for flexible workloads
  • Right-size your resources with AWS Compute Optimizer
  • Use Savings Plans or Reserved Instances for long-term usage
  • Monitor costs weekly, not just monthly

Final Thoughts

AWS offers robust tools to help you monitor and manage cloud spending effectively. Integrate these into your DevOps workflows to gain visibility and control over your cloud financials.