Overview
AWS cost and usage data exports regularly deliver detailed billing and usage data from Billing and Cost Management into your own AWS account. The data is stored in Amazon S3 (CSV or Parquet), where it can be queried, joined, and visualized with tools like Athena, QuickSight, or external BI platforms.
What you can export
Exports can include:
- Line‑item cost and usage data at account, service, usage type, and operation level
- Information about discounts and commitments such as Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
- Tags and cost allocation data to support chargeback/showback and unit cost reporting
- Multiple AWS accounts and Regions, when used with AWS Organizations
This is the same underlying data used by Cost Explorer and other billing tools, but under your control in S3.
Why it matters for visualization
Having cost and usage data in S3 enables:
- Building custom dashboards that match how your organization thinks about costs (teams, products, environments)
- Joining AWS cost data with business data (for example, revenue, users, or feature flags) to calculate unit economics
- Powering frameworks like Cloud Intelligence Dashboards and other Athena/QuickSight‑based solutions
Exports are the data foundation for most advanced AWS cost visualizations.
Learn more
For more details on configuring and using data exports, see: