Understanding AWS Cost Explorer: How Sierra-Cedar Tracks Cloud Spending Easily

At Sierra-Cedar, cloud solutions are at the heart of what we do. Whether we’re helping clients modernize their IT infrastructure or manage cloud-based applications, cost control is always a top priority. That’s where AWS Cost Explorer comes in—a powerful, yet easy-to-use tool that helps us (and our clients) understand and manage cloud costs better.

What is AWS Cost Explorer?

AWS Cost Explorer is a free tool provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that helps users visualize, understand, and manage their AWS cloud spending. It gives you detailed insights into where your money is going—across services, accounts, and time periods.

Think of it like your monthly electricity bill, but for the cloud. It tells you how much you’re spending, when, and on what.


Why Sierra-Cedar Uses AWS Cost Explorer

At Sierra-Cedar, our cloud consultants and engineers rely on AWS Cost Explorer to:

  • Track costs in real time

  • Break down spending by service or account

  • Spot unusual cost spikes

  • Plan future cloud budgets


Whether we're managing a single AWS account or multiple accounts for a large enterprise, Cost Explorer keeps our cloud spending transparent and under control.


Key Features (in Simple Terms)

Here are some features of AWS Cost Explorer that Sierra-Cedar uses regularly:

1. Visual Reports

Cost Explorer offers graphs and charts to show how much money is being spent over time. You can filter the data by:

  • Service (like EC2, S3, RDS, etc.)

  • Linked accounts

  • Tags (like “Project A” or “Marketing”)


2. Forecasting

You can see future cost estimates based on past usage. This helps us (and our clients) plan ahead and avoid surprises.

3. Cost Anomalies

It can send alerts if spending suddenly increases. This is helpful to quickly catch issues like misconfigured resources or forgotten services.

4. Filtering and Grouping

Need to know how much your dev team spent vs. your production team? You can group costs by tags to see exactly that.


Real Example: Helping a Client Save

One of Sierra-Cedar’s clients recently noticed a sudden jump in their AWS bill. Using AWS Cost Explorer, we quickly discovered that a new database instance had been launched but wasn’t being used. After terminating it, the client saved hundreds of dollars a month. Without Cost Explorer, that extra cost might have gone unnoticed for weeks.


Final Thoughts

At Sierra-Cedar, we believe that cloud services should bring value—not surprise bills. AWS Cost Explorer makes it easy for us and our clients to monitor spending, optimize resources, and stay in control of the cloud budget.

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