AWS Cost Explorer Pricing 2026: Free in the Console, Metered by API and Hourly Data
AWS Cost Explorer is AWS's built-in cost analysis tool. Looking at your costs in the console costs nothing. Money changes hands in three places: programmatic access through the Cost Explorer API, hourly-granularity data, and the paid extras in AWS Budgets.
Every figure on this page was read from AWS Cost Explorer's own pricing page, documentation, online store or its own AWS Marketplace listing on 1 October 2026, and each one links to where it came from. AWS Cost Explorer has not reviewed this page. Nothing here is estimated: where the vendor publishes no number, the page says so. How we source prices.
At a Glance
Where Cost Explorer Charges Start
| Feature | Price | AWS wording |
|---|---|---|
| Cost Explorer console | Free | You can view your costs and usage using the Cost Explorer user interface free of charge. |
| API, primary billing view | $0.01 per request | Each request using your primary billing view ... will incur a cost of $0.01. |
| API, custom billing views | $0.01 per source per request | For example, if you combine 5 separate billing views into a single view ... each API request cost $0.05. |
| Hourly granularity | $0.00000033 per usage record per day | which translates to $0.01 per 1,000 usage records monthly |
Sources: AWS docs: What is AWS Cost Explorer?; AWS Cost Explorer pricing, read 1 October 2026.
AWS Budgets
| Feature | Price |
|---|---|
| Budget monitoring and notifications | Free |
| Action-enabled budgets | First two free per month, then $0.10 per budget per day |
| AWS Budgets Reports | $0.01 per report delivered |
Source: AWS Budgets pricing, read 1 October 2026.
What AWS Cost Explorer Publishes, and What It Does Not
Published
- ✓That the console is free
- ✓Per-request API pricing, including custom billing views
- ✓Hourly-granularity pricing with a worked example
- ✓AWS Budgets free allowance and paid extras
Not published
- -Nothing material: AWS publishes the full price list for these features
When to Move Beyond It
Cost Explorer covers AWS only. Once you need one view across clouds, Kubernetes allocation or SaaS costs, the paid tools start to earn their fee; the tools comparison grades them, and the free tools guide covers how far the native options go.
How AWS Cost Explorer Compares With the Other Graded Tools
Every tool graded on our FinOps tools comparison that has a published price or a published free position, with the vendor's own pricing basis. Figures are not normalised to one spend level because the vendors meter different things (spend, cores, resources, runs).
| Tool | Pricing basis | Published figure | Source (read 1 October 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Cost Explorer | Native, free console; API metered | Console free; API $0.01 per request | AWS docs + pricing page |
| Azure Cost Management | Native, no additional cost | Free for Azure | azure.microsoft.com pricing |
| GCP Billing | Native, no additional charge; BigQuery export billed | Tools and Billing APIs free; BigQuery usage charged | cloud.google.com/cost-management |
| Infracost | Flat monthly plan | Free (1,000 runs/mo); Starter $250/mo; Cloud $1,000/mo | infracost.io/pricing |
| Vantage | Flat monthly plan by tracked-spend cap | Free to $2,500 spend; Pro $30/mo; Business $200/mo to $20,000 spend | vantage.sh/pricing |
| CloudQuell | Flat monthly fee by spend band | Free under $10K spend; $99/mo to $50K; $199/mo to $200K | cloudquell.com/pricing |
| Kubecost (IBM) | Free to 250 cores; paid per core per year | $63.60 per core per year, 250-core minimum (IBM store) | IBM store listing |
| Hyperglance | Resource count, billed annually | $899/mo (500 resources) to $4,492/mo (5,000) | hyperglance.com/pricing |
| Spot by Flexera | Metered: vCPU-hours and savings realized | $1.415 per 100 vCPU hours (pay-as-you-go listing) | AWS Marketplace (sold by Spot) |
| Finout | Flat annual fee by committed-spend tier | No price published (quote) | finout.io/pricing |
| CloudHealth (Broadcom) | Committed Cloud Spend Units ($1 of spend each) | $45,000 per 12 months to $150K/mo AWS spend | AWS Marketplace (sold by VMware Tanzu CloudHealth) |
| Cloudability (IBM) | Contract by annual cloud spend managed | $30,000 per 12 months to $1M annual spend | AWS Marketplace (sold by IBM Software) |
| Flexera One | Contract by yearly cloud spend under management | $50,000 per 12 months to $1M yearly spend (CCO) | AWS Marketplace (sold by Flexera) |
OpenCost, also graded on /tools, is open-source software with no vendor price list, so it has no row here; see the free tools guide.
AWS Cost Explorer Pricing FAQ
Is AWS Cost Explorer free?
The console is. AWS documentation states that you can view your costs and usage in the Cost Explorer user interface free of charge. Charges start when you call the Cost Explorer API or turn on hourly granularity.
How much does the AWS Cost Explorer API cost?
Each API request against your primary billing view costs $0.01. Requests against a custom billing view cost $0.01 per source, so a view combining 5 billing views costs $0.05 per request (AWS pricing page, read 1 October 2026).
How much does hourly granularity cost in Cost Explorer?
AWS charges $0.00000033 per usage record per day, which it translates to $0.01 per 1,000 usage records a month, billed daily on the hourly records held for the past 14 days. AWS's own example: one EC2 instance running all month produces 336 records a day and costs about $0.003 a month.
Do third-party FinOps tools add Cost Explorer API charges?
They can, if they query the Cost Explorer API. Vantage, for example, states on its pricing page that it calls the API only when you view accrued costs in its console, and describes the resulting AWS charges as typically very small.
Is AWS Budgets free?
Monitoring budgets and receiving notifications is free. The first two action-enabled budgets are free each month, after which each additional action-enabled budget costs $0.10 a day, and each AWS Budgets report delivered costs $0.01.
Sources
- AWS docs: What is AWS Cost Explorer?: console free of charge (read 1 October 2026)
- AWS Cost Explorer pricing: API and hourly granularity (read 1 October 2026)
- AWS Budgets pricing: budgets, actions, reports (read 1 October 2026)
- vantage.sh/pricing: Vantage's statement on Cost Explorer API charges (read 1 October 2026)
Vendor pricing read 1 October 2026