How can I use AWS Budgets to track my spending and usage?

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I want to monitor and track my AWS cost and usage. How can I set a custom budget?

Resolution

With AWS Budgets, you can set custom budgets that proactively alert you when your costs exceed your budgeted amount.

Consider the following when creating a budget:

Create a cost budget

To create a recurring fixed monthly cost budget, do the following:

  1. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
  2. On the navigation pane, choose Budgets.
  3. Choose Create budget.
  4. Select Cost budget. Then, choose Next.
  5. Under Details, enter a Budget name.
  6. Under Set budget amount, select Monthly from the list.
    Choose Recurring budget for Budget renewal type.
    Select a Start month.
    Select Fixed for Budgeting method.
    Enter a dollar amount for your budget in Enter your budgeted amount ($). For example, 50.00.
  7. Under Budget scope, select All AWS services.
    Note: For Advanced options, choose the options that are best for your use case, or leave the default settings.
  8. Choose Next.
  9. Choose Add an alert threshold.
  10. Under Set alert threshold, for Threshold, enter the amount that must be reached for you to be notified. This can be either an absolute value or a percentage.
  11. Under Set alert threshold, for Trigger, choose Actual to create an alert for your actual spend. Or, choose Forecasted to create an alert for your forecasted spend. You can set up multiple alert thresholds within the same Budget by choosing Add alert threshold.
    For example, suppose you have a budget of $50 and want to be notified when you are forecasted to exceed 80% of this amount. Enter 80, choose % of the budgeted amount, and then choose Forecasted as the Trigger.
  12. Under Notification preferences – Optional, select a notification method by Email recipients, Amazon SNS Alerts, or Amazon Chatbot Alerts. Your threshold must have at least one notification method or action configured.
  13. Choose Next.
  14. For Attach actions - Optional, you can configure an action that AWS Budgets performs on your behalf when the alert threshold is exceeded. For more information and instructions, see To configure a budget action.
  15. Choose Next.
  16. Review your budget settings, and then choose Create budget.

View your budgets

To view your budgets, do the following:

  1. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
  2. On the navigation pane, choose Budgets.
  3. To see the filters and cost variances for your budgets, choose the budget's name in your list of budgets.
    Note: For more information, see Reading your budgets.
  4. To view the budget history, choose **View in AWS Cost Explorer.**Note: After you create a budget, it might take up to 24 hours for the Cost Explorer graph to appear.

AWS Budgets information is updated up to three times a day. Updates typically occur eight to twelve hours after the previous update.

Delete a budget

Important: You can't recover a budget after you delete it. If you delete a budget, all email notifications and notification subscribers that are associated with the budget are also deleted.

To delete a budget, do the following:

  1. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
  2. On the navigation pane, choose Budgets.
  3. From your list of budgets, select one or more budgets that you want to delete.
  4. At the top of the page, choose Actions, and then choose Delete.
  5. Choose Confirm.

Related information

Reporting your budget metrics with budget reports

How can I use Cost Explorer to analyze my spending and usage?

1 Comment

Really great path to improve more control in the cloud.

replied 10 months ago