Billing Dashboard in AWS
? AWS Billing Dashboard Overview
? Location
You can access it from the AWS Management Console:
Console Home ? Click on Billing (top right under your account name)
Or visit: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing
? What You Can Do with the Billing Dashboard
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Monthly Spend Overview | Shows current month's estimated charges and services used. |
| Cost Explorer | Visualize and analyze your AWS spending patterns over time. |
| Budgets | Set custom budget thresholds and get alerts when spending is high. |
| Free Tier Usage Alerts | Track how much of the AWS Free Tier you've used. |
| Bills | View detailed invoices with service-by-service breakdowns. |
| Payment Methods | Manage credit cards, billing info, and tax settings. |
| Consolidated Billing | For organizations with multiple linked AWS accounts. |
? Key Sections of the Billing Dashboard
Dashboard
Summary of total charges
Monthly forecast
Recent charges by service
Bills
Line-item view of service usage and costs.
Downloadable invoices (PDF/CSV).
Cost Explorer
Graphs of cost by service, time, region, linked account.
Filter by tag, service, or usage type.
Budgets
Create budgets for:
Cost
Usage
Reservations
Savings Plans
Reports
Download detailed billing and usage reports (CSV).
Useful for integration with accounting tools.
Free Tier
Track usage of free-tier services (e.g., EC2, S3, Lambda).
Alerts you when usage nears the free limit.
? Example Use Case
Let’s say you're running a few EC2 instances and storing data in S3. The Billing Dashboard will:
Show how much EC2 is costing you daily.
Forecast your end-of-month total.
Alert you if you exceed $50 this month (if you set a budget).
? Security Tip:
Enable IAM policies to allow only specific users to access billing info.
Also, enable MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) on the root account for safety.
