Monitoring and Managing Costs

AWS Cost Explorer

Flat-rate plans appear in Cost Explorer as charge line items.

Example Cost Explorer Display

Service                        Service total    November 2025
CloudFront Flat-Rate Plans     $15.00           $15.00

Available Filtering Options

Cost Allocation Tags

Tag Applicability

For flat-rate plans, only tags applied to the primary billable resource will appear in billing reports. Tags on associated resources that are included in the flat-rate plan do not generate separate charges and therefore do not appear in flat-rate plan billing reports.

Tagging Strategy

Cost Center: CC-12345
Department: Marketing
Project: Website-Redesign
Environment: Production
Application: CustomerPortal
Owner: jane.doe@example.com

Activation Steps

AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR)

Configuration

Example Queries

Monthly flat-rate charges (example: CloudFront)

SELECT
  DATE_TRUNC('month', line_item_usage_start_date) AS month,
  line_item_usage_account_id,
  line_item_usage_account_name,
  SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE line_item_product_code = 'CloudFrontPlans'
GROUP BY month, line_item_usage_account_id, line_item_usage_account_name
ORDER BY month, total_cost DESC;

Charges by plan tier

SELECT
  line_item_usage_type AS plan_tier,
  line_item_line_item_description AS plan_description,
  COUNT(DISTINCT line_item_resource_id) AS plan_count,
  SUM(line_item_usage_amount) AS total_usage_count,
  SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE line_item_product_code = '<service_code>'
GROUP BY plan_tier, plan_description
ORDER BY total_cost DESC;

Resource-level charges

SELECT
  line_item_resource_id,
  line_item_usage_type AS plan_tier,
  line_item_line_item_description AS plan_description,
  SUM(line_item_usage_amount) AS usage_count,
  SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE line_item_product_code = '<service_code>'
GROUP BY line_item_resource_id, plan_tier, plan_description
ORDER BY total_cost DESC;

Department-level charges (requires cost allocation tags)

SELECT
  resource_tags_user_department AS department,
  line_item_usage_type AS plan_tier,
  COUNT(DISTINCT line_item_resource_id) AS resource_count,
  SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS total_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE line_item_product_code = '<service_code>'
  AND resource_tags_user_department IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY department, plan_tier
ORDER BY department, total_cost DESC;