Skip to main content
AWS Cost Explorer is an AWS tool that provides detailed visibility into your cloud costs and usage. It allows you to analyze spending patterns, identify cost drivers, and track costs by service, linked account, or custom tags over time.

​
Configuring AWS Cost Explorer as a Source

In the Sources tab, click on the “Add source” button located on the top right of your screen. Then, select the AWS Cost Explorer option from the list of connectors. Click Next and you’ll be prompted to add your access.

​
1. Add account access

You’ll need to provide AWS credentials with permissions to access the Cost Explorer API. The IAM user or role must have the ce:GetCostAndUsage permission. The following configurations are available:
  • AWS Access Key ID: Your AWS access key ID with Cost Explorer permissions.
  • AWS Secret Access Key: Your AWS secret access key.
  • Start Date: The earliest date from which cost records will be synced (format: YYYY-MM-DD).

​
Advanced settings

  • AWS Region: The AWS region for the Cost Explorer API. Cost Explorer is a global service, so this defaults to us-east-1.
  • Granularity: Sets the aggregation granularity for cost data. Options are DAILY (default), MONTHLY, or HOURLY.
  • Cost Metric: Which cost metric to retrieve. Options include UnblendedCost (default), BlendedCost, AmortizedCost, NetAmortizedCost, NetUnblendedCost, NormalizedUsageAmount, and UsageQuantity.
  • Tag Key: If you want to group costs by a specific AWS cost allocation tag, provide the tag key here (e.g., Environment, Project, Team). This enables the cost_by_tag stream.
Once you’re done, click Next.

​
2. Select streams

Choose which data streams you want to sync. For faster extractions, select only the streams that are relevant to your analysis. Select the streams and click Next.

​
3. Configure data streams

Customize how you want your data to appear in your catalog. Select the desired layer where the data will be placed, a folder to organize it inside the layer, a name for each table, and the type of sync.
  • Layer: choose between the existing layers on your catalog.
  • Folder: a folder can be created inside the selected layer to group all tables being created from this new data source.
  • Table name: we suggest a name, but feel free to customize it. You have the option to add a prefix to all tables at once.
  • Sync Type: you can choose between INCREMENTAL and FULL_TABLE.
    • Incremental: every time the extraction happens, only new data since the last sync is fetched.
    • Full table: every time the extraction happens, the current state of the data is fetched.
Once you are done configuring, click Next.

​
4. Configure data source

Describe your data source for easy identification within your organization, not exceeding 140 characters. To define your Trigger, consider how often you want data to be extracted from this source. AWS cost data is typically updated once per day, so a daily trigger is recommended. Once you are ready, click Next to finalize the setup.

​
5. Check your new source

You can view your new source on the Sources page. If needed, manually trigger the source extraction by clicking on the arrow button. Once executed, your data will appear in your Catalog.
For you to be able to see it on your Catalog, you need at least one successful source run.

​
Streams and Fields

Below you’ll find all available data streams from AWS Cost Explorer and their corresponding fields:
Total aggregated cost and usage across all AWS services for each time period.Fields:
  • time_period_start - Start date of the time period (e.g., 2024-01-01)
  • time_period_end - End date of the time period
  • metric_name - Name of the cost metric (e.g., UnblendedCost)
  • amount - The cost amount for the period
  • unit - The unit of the amount (e.g., USD)
Cost and usage broken down by AWS service (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, AWS Lambda) for each time period.Fields:
  • time_period_start - Start date of the time period
  • time_period_end - End date of the time period
  • group_by_key - The grouping dimension (SERVICE)
  • group_by_value - The AWS service name (e.g., Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Compute)
  • metric_name - Name of the cost metric
  • amount - The cost amount for the period
  • unit - The unit of the amount
Cost and usage broken down by linked AWS account for each time period. Useful for organizations with multiple AWS accounts under a consolidated billing setup.Fields:
  • time_period_start - Start date of the time period
  • time_period_end - End date of the time period
  • group_by_key - The grouping dimension (LINKED_ACCOUNT)
  • group_by_value - The AWS account ID
  • metric_name - Name of the cost metric
  • amount - The cost amount for the period
  • unit - The unit of the amount
Cost and usage broken down by a user-specified AWS cost allocation tag. This stream is only available when a Tag Key is configured in the source settings.Fields:
  • time_period_start - Start date of the time period
  • time_period_end - End date of the time period
  • group_by_key - The tag key prefixed with “tag:” (e.g., tag:Environment)
  • group_by_value - The tag value (e.g., production, staging)
  • metric_name - Name of the cost metric
  • amount - The cost amount for the period
  • unit - The unit of the amount
You must first activate cost allocation tags in your AWS Billing console for them to appear in Cost Explorer data. See AWS documentation for details.