Billing Alarm that Measures Credits Spent / Resource Usage

Question

I've created a Cloudwatch billing alarm to measure "EstimatedCharges". However, because we are on credits, it always shows as 0.
Is there any way to set a billing alarm that measures either credits spent or just does not include the credits in the metric so it measures the actual resources used?

Accepted Answer

Hi THere

You wont be able to do this with a CloudWatch alarm because the `EstimatedCharges` metric always includes credits.

You can do it another way by using AWS Budgets.  In AWS Budgets, you can set a spend limit and get alerted when you spend is exceeding that limit.  You have control over the charge types like excluding Credits, discounts, etc.  See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/create-cost-budget.html

Example Budget setup:

![Enter image description here](/media/postImages/original/IMakoFPPLLQnW4_ZAA1j2wZQ)

Billing Alarm that Measures Credits Spent / Resource Usage

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