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AWS Budgets

What is it​

A service that allows you to set custom budgets to track your AWS costs and usage, and receive alerts when your spending exceeds (or is forecasted to exceed) your defined limits.

What it's for​

Monitor and control AWS spending, prevent excessive spending, and ensure you stay within your budget.

Use cases​

  • Set budgets for costs, usage, Reserved Instance (RI) utilization, and RI coverage.
  • Receive email or SNS alerts when budget limits are reached or forecasted to be reached.
  • Monitor AWS free tier usage to avoid unexpected charges.
  • Create budgets for specific projects or departments.

Key points​

  • Customizable alerts: Configure alerts based on actual or forecasted costs.
  • Budget types: Supports cost, usage, RI utilization, and RI coverage budgets.
  • Actions: Can configure automatic actions (e.g., stop EC2 instances) when a budget is exceeded.
  • Granularity: Define budgets by service, account, region, tags, etc.
  • Forecasting: Helps predict future spending based on current usage.

Comparison​

  • AWS Budgets vs. AWS Cost Explorer: Budgets focuses on setting spending limits and alerting when those limits are reached or forecasted to be reached. It's a proactive tool for cost control. Cost Explorer is a cost analysis and visualization tool that allows you to explore and understand historical spending and forecast trends. It's a reactive tool for cost analysis.