AWS Cost Explorer

Query AWS costs and usage details with flexible granularity - from service-level overview to detailed usage type breakdown.

Capabilities

• Query daily AWS costs by service (e.g., EC2, S3, OpenSearch, DocumentDB)
• Drill down to usage type details for specific services (e.g., instance types, storage, data transfer)
• Filter results by minimum cost threshold
• Support both relative dates (days ago) and absolute dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Output in human-readable table or JSON format

Usage

Quick Commands

To query costs, use the bundled script at scripts/cost_query.py:

# Query costs from 2 days ago (default) by service
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py

# Query yesterday's costs, show items > $5
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --days-ago 1 --min-cost 5

# Query specific date
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --date 2026-01-15

# Query specific service's usage breakdown
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --service "Amazon OpenSearch Service" --min-cost 1

# Query all services with usage type details
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --detailed --min-cost 5

# Output as JSON
python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --json --min-cost 5

Script Options

Option	Short	Description
--days-ago	-d	Query N days ago (default: 2, i.e., day before yesterday)
--date		Query specific date (YYYY-MM-DD format)
--min-cost	-m	Minimum cost threshold to display (default: 0)
--service	-s	Query usage type breakdown for a specific service
--detailed		Show all services with usage type breakdown
--json	-j	Output in JSON format

Common Service Names

When using --service, use the exact AWS service names:

Common Name	AWS Service Name
OpenSearch	Amazon OpenSearch Service
DocumentDB/MongoDB	Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)
EC2 Compute	Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Compute
EC2 Other (EBS, NAT)	EC2 - Other
EFS	Amazon Elastic File System
S3	Amazon Simple Storage Service
RDS	Amazon Relational Database Service
EKS	Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes
VPC	Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
Bedrock	Amazon Bedrock
Lambda	AWS Lambda
CloudWatch	AmazonCloudWatch

Understanding Usage Types

Common usage type patterns:

Pattern	Meaning
BoxUsage:*	EC2 instance hours (e.g., BoxUsage:m7i.large)
ESInstance:*	OpenSearch instance hours
EBS:VolumeUsage.*	EBS storage (e.g., EBS:VolumeUsage.gp3)
TimedStorage-ByteHrs	S3/EFS storage capacity
DataTransfer-*	Data transfer costs
NatGateway-*	NAT Gateway costs
VpcEndpoint-*	VPC Endpoint costs
*-input-tokens / *-output-tokens	Bedrock token usage
Elastic*Usage	DocumentDB Elastic costs

Prerequisites

• AWS CLI configured with appropriate credentials
• IAM permissions for ce:GetCostAndUsage

Example Workflow

1. First, get service-level overview:

   python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --min-cost 5
   

2. Identify high-cost services, then drill down:

   python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --service "Amazon OpenSearch Service" --min-cost 1
   

3. For comprehensive analysis, use detailed mode:

   python3 <skill-path>/scripts/cost_query.py --detailed --min-cost 5