AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR) provide comprehensive AWS billing and usage data for detailed cost tracking, analysis, and management. Like:
- Track AWS resource usage and estimated costs by hourly or monthly usage.
- Generate reports for specific AWS services, resources, and custom cost categories.
- Automatically deliver report files to an Amazon S3 bucket.
- Reports can be updated up to three times a day with the latest billing data.
- Use AWS APIs to create, retrieve, and delete Cost and Usage Reports programmatically.
- With consolidated billing, only the payer account can create and manage CUR reports. Member accounts cannot create separate billing reports, but their individual costs can still be viewed.
Steps to Configure AWS Cost and Usage Reports
Step 1: First sign into the AWS Management Console and then navigate to the Billing and Cost Management console.
Step 2: Select Data Exports from the left sidebar under the Cost and Usage Analysis section.
Step 3: Click on Create in the Data Exports dashboard to create a new AWS Cost and Usage Report.
Step 4: Configure the export settings for the AWS Cost and Usage Report by selecting the required report type, granularity, file format, and storage options. Use the following recommended settings:
- Export type: Standard data export
- Export name: MyCostExport
- Data table option: CUR 2.0
- Billing view: Primary view
- Include Resource IDs: Enabled
- Time granularity: Daily
- File versioning: Overwrite existing data export file
- Compression type & format: Parquet
- Storage account: This account
- S3 bucket: Select or configure your S3 bucket
- S3 path prefix: Enter a custom prefix name for report storage
Step 5: The AWS Cost and Usage Report is successfully created and stored in the selected Amazon S3 bucket.
Note: Always stop or delete AWS resources after testing to avoid unwanted charges in your AWS account.
