Cost Explorer adds EC2 Usage Data and New Filtering/Grouping Options

Today, we added several enhancements to Cost Explorer that will allow you to better understand and manage your AWS costs, especially those related to EC2.

First, we added EC2 usage data to Cost Explorer, allowing you to visualize your EC2 usage alongside costs for a better understanding of underlying cost drivers. Along with those new data, we have added several categories on which you can filter, group, and view your EC2 costs. Specifically, we have added an Instance Type category and separated the EC2 category into EC2 Instances, Elastic Load Balancing (“ELB”), and Elastic Block Store (“EBS”). These additions provide you with the ability to analyze your EC2 costs in greater detail. For example, you can create a Cost Explorer report showing the preceding six months of monthly cost data and filter by “Service: EC2-Instances” to display only costs associated with instance hours (excluding ELB and EBS). You can further refine your filter to include only those costs related to a specific instance type (e.g., m4.large) or group of instance types. Cost Explorer will then display not only the costs associated with those parameters, but also the corresponding usage (EC2 instance hours).

In addition to those EC2-specific feature enhancements, we have added a Region category on which you can filter and/or group your costs for all services (and usage for EC2).

These new categories join a long list on which you are able to filter and group your cost data—across all AWS products—for visual analysis in Cost Explorer, including Service, Account, Tag, Availability Zone (“AZ”), Purchase Option (e.g., reserved), and API Operation.

To get started, navigate to the Cost Explorer page on the Billing and Cost Management console. To learn more about these new capabilities and how to use Cost Explorer to better understand and manage your AWS costs, see the Cost Explorer User Guide.