Question: What is the difference between AWS Cost Explorer and Cost and Usage Report?

Answer

AWS offers two key tools for cost management and optimization: Cost Explorer and the Cost and Usage Report (CUR). While both tools help track and analyze AWS spending, they serve distinct purposes and offer varying levels of granularity and flexibility.

Key Differences Between AWS Cost Explorer and Cost and Usage Report:

1. Purpose and Use Case

• Cost Explorer: This is a high-level, user-friendly tool designed for visualizing and analyzing your AWS costs and usage over time. It gives you the ability to generate reports, create trends, and forecast based on historical data. Cost Explorer is typically used for quick snapshots and overviews.
• Cost and Usage Report (CUR): CUR provides the most detailed viewing of AWS cost and usage data. It is a comprehensive report that shows usage down to the service level and includes various dimensions such as cost allocation tags, resource IDs, and more. CUR is frequently used in more complex scenarios, such as integrating with third-party business intelligence tools or for in-depth chargeback models.

2. Granularity

• Cost Explorer: Limited in terms of granularity, offering aggregated data that can be filtered by service, linked accounts, tags, and some other high-level attributes. It’s not intended for granular, per-resource tracking.
• CUR: Provides up to hourly granularity, making it suitable for tracking down costs to specific resources, accounts, and even regions on a microscopic level. CUR can expose a vast amount of data, sometimes overwhelming for day-to-day cost management but invaluable for in-depth analysis.

3. Data Format and Access

• Cost Explorer: Data is accessible through a web interface, with minimal setup. It offers visualizations in the form of charts and graphs, allowing users to filter data directly via the AWS Console.
• CUR: Provides a downloadable raw format (CSV or Parquet), which you then store in an S3 bucket. This raw data is often processed through querying tools like Amazon Athena or integrated into business intelligence tools like Tableau or Power BI.

4. Customization and Flexibility

• Cost Explorer: It provides several pre-built reports, with some level of filtering and customization (for tags, account, services, etc.). However, the flexibility decreases significantly once you need to go beyond those pre-configured options.
• CUR: CUR is highly customizable, with every single piece of cost and usage data available for you to manipulate. You can create intricate reports and integrate them with internal accounting or cost allocation systems for maximum control.

5. Retention Period

• Cost Explorer: Stores up to 12 months of data, and allows forecasting up to 12 months into the future based on historical usage patterns.
• CUR: RETAINS data for the duration that you configure it to export reports (you can even keep it indefinitely in an S3 bucket). Since data in CUR is stored in files, you can hold onto historical data for as long as you need.

6. Ideal User/Use Case

• Cost Explorer: Best suited for non-technical users (cost managers, finance teams, etc.) who need quick insights, trends, and granular forecasts. It is excellent for creating snapshot overviews for cross-team sharing.
• CUR: Ideal for advanced AWS users (accountants, DevOps, and cloud financial analysts) who need detailed, granular spending analysis and custom reporting. It requires some level of technical proficiency or BI tool integration for effective use.

Example Use Cases:

1. Cost Explorer would be useful for performing quick, high-level tasks like:

   • Viewing monthly spend and trends.
   • Dissecting costs by service or linked account.
   • Setting up and tracking budgets.
   • Forecasting future AWS spend.

2. Cost and Usage Report is better suited for situations like:

   • Creating detailed financial analysis across multiple AWS accounts.
   • Building complex financial models (e.g., chargeback and showback).
   • Parsing data for highly specific internal reporting systems.
   • Integrating with enterprise financial or BI tools for deeper insight into costs.

Conclusion

To summarize, AWS Cost Explorer is simple, high-level, and user-friendly but offers limited granularity. AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is deeply detailed, highly customizable, and better suited for advanced users requiring granular data. Depending on your use case (quick insights vs. in-depth analysis), either or both tools could play a role in your organizational cloud cost management strategy.