Auditaz and AWS Cost Explorer
Cost Explorer shows where the money went. We show which part of it was waste.
What each one does
Cost Explorer is AWS's own cost reporting tool, and it is good at what it sets out to do: group spend by service, tag, account and period, with charts and forecasting. If the question is "why did this month's bill go up", it answers it.
What it does not do is look at your resources. It sees billing lines, not unattached EBS volumes or instances sitting at near-zero CPU — because those two things appear on the invoice exactly like fully used resources do. Working out which of your resources are waste means crossing usage against price, resource by resource, which is a different job from grouping an invoice.
Side by side
| Cost Explorer | Auditaz | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Where my spend went | Which part of my spend is waste |
| How much is recoverable | You work it out | In dollars, per resource and per year |
| Usage crossed with price | CloudWatch and pricing on separate screens | Crossed in the same check |
| After you close the tab | Only looks again if you open it | Monitoring tells you when something new appears |
When the other tool is the right call
If what you need is to understand the shape of the invoice, attribute cost per team through tags, or project next quarter's spend, Cost Explorer does that better than we do — and it is already in your account at no charge. The two tools answer different questions and sit together fine.