Cost Analyzer
Last updated
Last updated
You can use Cost Analyzer to view and break down your cloud spend across accounts, services, regions, resources, and usage types. It supports grouping, filtering, and cost-type selection to help you analyze spend patterns.
Log into OneLens.
Navigate to the Cost Analyzer from the main dashboard.
Here is how the dashboard will look like:
Hide Chart Toggle
Start with the default view for a quick overview, or switch to a custom view to tailor the dashboard layout and focus.
Predefined Range: Quickly access relevant cost data by selecting a range such as “Last 2 Weeks” or “Month-to-Date”.
Custom Range: If you need to analyze costs over a specific period, define a custom date range to focus on the exact time frame.
You can aggregate cost data in three different ways, depending on the granularity you need for your analysis:
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
You can choose the most relevant Cost Representation Type to gain the insights you need:
Unblended Cost – See the raw cost before any discounts.
Net Unblended Cost – Get the final bill after AWS discounts are applied.
Blended Cost – Useful when managing accounts with shared resources.
Amortized Cost – See long-term costs distributed across the commitment period.
Net Amortized Cost – The clearest view of your true, discounted long-term spending.
To help structure and analyze your cloud expenditure, you can group your cost data by various dimensions.
You can group by using the following dimensions:
Tenancy, Tag, Region, Option, Platform, Entity, Type, Engine, Cost Center, Category, Charge, Billing, Zone, Usage Type
OneLens supports grouping up to four levels, enabling multi-dimensional cost analysis for deeper insights.
A Finance Director needs to understand the distribution of cloud costs across different business units and resource types to find potential cost-saving opportunities.
Solution:
The finance team utilizes the Group By feature across four levels:
Cost Center – Groups costs based on departments, such as R&D, Marketing, and Operations.
Service – Break down the costs by specific AWS services within each cost center, such as EC2, RDS, and S3.
Instance Type – Further groups EC2 costs by instance type (e.g., m5.large, t3.medium), highlighting performance and cost considerations.
Resource – Identifies specific EC2 instances or RDS databases that contribute to the overall costs.
Filters help refine cost reports by focusing on specific data points.
Here is how you apply filters:
Navigate to the Filters section in the Cost Analyzer.
Select multiple conditions to filter data using an AND condition.
Add rules by selecting:
Field: Choose a cost attribute (e.g., Service, Account, Usage Type, Cost Center).
Operator: Available operators for setting filter conditions include In or Not In.
Value: Enter the specific data point to filter (e.g., EC2, us-east-1, >$1000).
Click Apply to filter cost data and focus on relevant insights.
A cloud engineer wants to analyze storage costs for a specific AWS region and service to track data transfer expenses more effectively.
Solution:
The engineer applies the following filters:
Service: Amazon S3
Region: us-east-1
The Cost Analyzer then displays cost data specifically for Amazon S3 in the US-east-1 region, helping the engineer track and investigate any rising data transfer costs.
Once your report is configured, you can analyze cost data using key metrics and visual trends.
Total Cost: Shows your overall cloud expenditure for the selected period.
Total Cost Delta: Highlights variations in costs compared to the corresponding previous period, helping you track increases or reductions.
Cost MTD (Month-to-Date): Displays the total accumulated cost from the start of the current month to the present date.
The table view includes the following key columns:
Displays overall spending for the selected period.
Refers to the cloud costs from the time period directly before the one you are currently viewing. For example:
If you are looking at costs for the month of March, the Previous Cost will show the expenses from February (the month immediately before March).
If you're looking at costs for a specific week, the Previous Cost will display the costs from the week before the one you selected.
Highlights the difference between the selected and previous periods.
You can view this cost in:
Dollar form
Percentage form
Columns for daily, weekly, or monthly breakdowns based on the selected granularity.
Each row in the table contains a Display option. This option allows users to highlight data in the chart, focusing on specific cost patterns visually.
You can also export cost reports for offline analysis and sharing with stakeholders:
Click on the Export button in the Cost Analyzer section.
Select the preferred format for your report:
CSV: Ideal for detailed data analysis and manipulation.
Excel: Provides a spreadsheet version of the cost report.
Below is a sample of how the exported file might look:
