AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)Billing, Pricing, and SupportMedium
A retail company wants to know its exact spend on Amazon EC2 over the past six months, broken down by linked account and instance type, to identify cost trends. Which AWS tool should the finance team use?
- AAWS Pricing Calculator
- BAWS Trusted Advisor
- CAWS Cost Explorer
- DAWS Marketplace
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost Explorer provides visualization and analysis of actual historical AWS spending and usage, with filtering by linked account, service, and instance type over customizable time ranges. Pricing Calculator only estimates future costs, while Marketplace and Trusted Advisor are unrelated to historical cost analysis.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Pricing Calculator is for pre-deployment estimates, not historical actual spend analysis.
- B. Trusted Advisor gives best-practice recommendations, not detailed historical cost breakdowns.
- D. Marketplace is a storefront for third-party software, not a cost analysis tool.
AWS Cost Explorer
A tool that visualizes and analyzes historical AWS costs and usage with filtering by account, service, and other dimensions.
- Default view shows up to 12 months of history plus forecasts
- Supports filtering by linked account, service, tag, and instance type
- Free to use within the AWS Management Console
Memory trick: Explorer looks back, Calculator looks ahead