Cost Management Tools — Explorer, Budgets, Calculators, Trusted Advisor

The lifecycle

1. BEFORE starting → TCO / Pricing Calculator (estimate)
2. WHEN starting   → AWS Budgets (limits + alerts)
3. WHILE running   → Cost Explorer (visualize) + cost allocation tags (track who)
4. OPTIMIZE        → Trusted Advisor (find waste)

Tools

Tool	Job
Cost Explorer	Visualize past + forecast future spend (charts by service/account/tag), RI/Savings Plans recommendations
AWS Budgets	Spending limits + alerts at 50/85/100% → SNS/email. Types: cost, usage, RI utilization, SP coverage
AWS Pricing Calculator	Estimate cost of PLANNED architecture (before building)
TCO Calculator	Compare on-prem vs AWS total cost (migration decision)
Trusted Advisor	Audit + recommendations: idle instances, underutilized EBS, MFA, open ports, service limits. Basic=7 checks, Business+=full
Cost allocation tags	Label resources (team/project) → Cost Explorer groups by tag

Exam mapping

Scenario	Tool
Visualize + forecast spend	Cost Explorer
Alert when spend > $X	Budgets
Estimate planned architecture	Pricing Calculator
On-prem vs cloud comparison	TCO Calculator
Find idle resources	Trusted Advisor
Track spend by department	Cost allocation tags

[[aws/index]]
[[aws/ec2-pricing/index]]
[[aws/support-plans/index]]
[[aws/organizations/index]]