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

First, get service-level overview:

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

Identify high-cost services, then drill down:

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

For comprehensive analysis, use detailed mode:

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