How long does AWS Cost Explorer take to update all data of a particular day?

Question

I have been collecting data related to AWS service costs and saving it on my machine, daily.

I've noticed that the costs changes as time passes by. Reading the docs I've read that the current's month data is avaliable in about 24 hours and the rest of my data is available a few days longer.

My question is: If I collect yesterday's data (let it be March 1, 2024), how many days does it take to calculate the real cost of that day? Because If I collect it on March 2, the costs of March 1 will increase a little bit over time if I collect it again later. So, I want to know a range of days after a specific day where I guarantee that the costs of that particular day will not change. That is, given a certain date, how many days for cost explorer to calculate all costs related to that date?

Answer

The monthly billing cycle is based on midnight UTC, so it seems sensible to assume that the daily breakdown in Cost Explorer is the same https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/monthly-aws-billing

> The billing cycle is based in the UTC (+00:00) time zone.

You've already identified that Cost Explorer can take up to 24 hours to update, which is confirmed by https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/ce-what-is.html

> Cost Explorer refreshes your cost data at least once every 24 hours. However, this depends on your upstream data from your billing applications, and some data might be updated later than 24 hours.

In answer to your question:

> If I collect yesterday's data (let it be March 1, 2024), how many days does it take to calculate the real cost of that day?

Depending what timezone you are in, it could be (to all intents and purposes) two days later that the data is available.

In your example, the billing cycle ends at 23:59 UTC on 1st March. Suppose you're in Australia, where the local time is already 10:59 on 2nd March. It may be up to 24 hours after this, so 10:59 on 3rd March, before the data is finally complete.

How long does AWS Cost Explorer take to update all data of a particular day?

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