Aws Billing And Cost Management
Analyze AWS bills, set budgets, right-size workloads, and find Savings Plans or Reserved Instance savings without misusing Cost Explorer, CUR, or Compute Optimizer APIs.
Overview
AWS Billing and Cost Management is an agent skill most often used in Operate (also Ship and Grow) that analyzes AWS spend, budgets, and optimization options using Cost Explorer, Compute Optimizer, CUR, and related billin
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill aws-billing-and-cost-managementWhat is this skill?
- Cost Explorer breakdowns by service, account, tag, and time range with billing-view ARN scoping
- Budget thresholds, anomaly detection, and Free Tier usage monitoring
- Savings Plans and Reserved Instance evaluation workflows
- Compute Optimizer right-sizing for EC2, Lambda, RDS, and EBS
- Athena CUR query patterns and service pricing lookups for audits and spike investigation
Adoption & trust: 1.4k installs on skills.sh; 819 GitHub stars; 2/3 security scanners passed (skills.sh audits).
What problem does it solve?
You see an AWS bill or spike but do not trust ad-hoc console clicking or wrong API patterns to explain spend or safe savings.
Who is it for?
Solo builders running production workloads on AWS who need recurring cost reviews, spike forensics, or pre-purchase Savings Plan / RI decisions.
Skip if: Teams with no AWS footprint, purely local dev with zero cloud bill, or organizations that forbid agents from touching billing APIs and credentials.
When should I use this skill?
AWS bill, cost analysis, reduce spend, savings plan, reserved instance, right-size, budget alert, cost optimization, pricing, free tier, cost anomaly, CUR, cost audit, billing view, or billing view ARN.
What do I get? / Deliverables
You get scoped cost breakdowns, budget and anomaly context, right-sizing guidance, and commitment purchase evaluation grounded in AWS billing product workflows.
- Cost breakdown and trend narrative
- Right-sizing and commitment recommendations
- Budget or anomaly investigation notes with CUR query patterns when needed
Recommended Skills
Journey fit
Spans multiple journey phases - primary shelf plus alternate fits below.
Recurring spend, billing views, and Free Tier monitoring are production operations concerns—the canonical shelf is Operate before you treat optimization as a one-off ship task. Cost Explorer, Budgets, Athena CUR, and billing-view scoping are infrastructure finance controls, not application feature work.
Where it fits
Monthly bill review scoped to a billing view ARN before renewing Savings Plans.
Investigate a cost anomaly alert and correlate with service-level Cost Explorer trends.
Right-size EC2 and Lambda with Compute Optimizer ahead of a traffic launch.
Run Athena CUR queries to attribute spend by feature tag for pricing decisions.
How it compares
Use for AWS-native cost APIs and optimization rituals—not generic spreadsheet budgeting or non-AWS FinOps templates.
Common Questions / FAQ
Who is aws-billing-and-cost-management for?
Indie and solo builders who deploy on AWS and own monthly spend, budgets, and optimization decisions without a dedicated FinOps team.
When should I use aws-billing-and-cost-management?
At Operate for bill reviews and Free Tier checks; at Ship when right-sizing before scale; at Grow when analyzing cost trends—especially on triggers like cost anomaly, CUR, savings plan, or billing view ARN.
Is aws-billing-and-cost-management safe to install?
It implies AWS API access and account-scoped cost data—review the Security Audits panel on this page and restrict credentials to least-privilege billing read roles before use.
SKILL.md
READMESKILL.md - Aws Billing And Cost Management
# Billing and Cost Management ## Overview Analyze, optimize, and manage AWS costs. This skill encodes domain expertise from AWS's cost management products — gotchas, correct API usage patterns, and optimization workflows that models frequently get wrong. ## Usage Use this skill when: - Analyzing AWS spending, cost trends, or cost breakdowns - Setting up or managing budget alerts - Evaluating Savings Plans or Reserved Instance purchases - Right-sizing EC2, Lambda, RDS, or EBS resources - Looking up AWS service pricing - Running cost audits or investigating cost spikes - Querying CUR data with Athena - Scoping cost analysis to a specific billing view - Checking Free Tier usage ## Core Concepts - **Cost Explorer** — query cost/usage data by service, account, tag, or time range - **Budgets** — set spending thresholds with alerts; supports billing view scoping - **Billing Views** — scope cost data to a subset of billing (custom view, billing group, or primary) - **Compute Optimizer** — right-sizing recommendations for EC2, Lambda, EBS, RDS - **Cost Optimization Hub** — aggregated savings recommendations across services - **Savings Plans / Reserved Instances** — commitment-based discounts - **CUR 2.0** — detailed line-item billing data queryable via Athena **Recommended setup:** Use the AWS MCP server for sandboxed execution, audit logging, and enterprise controls. See: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-mcp/ **Without AWS MCP:** All commands use standard AWS CLI syntax and work with any agent that has CLI access. ## Critical Rule: Always Check the Current Date **Before making ANY Cost Explorer, Budgets, or Savings Plans API call, you MUST determine the current date.** Use a tool to get the current date and time — do NOT assume or guess the year. LLMs frequently default to dates from their training data instead of the actual current date, producing analyses of stale data that appear correct but are completely wrong. ## Critical Rule: Deterministic Calculations **You MUST NEVER perform numerical calculations (sums, averages, percentages, comparisons, counts, min/max) by reasoning in your response.** LLM arithmetic is unreliable and produces wrong answers on cost data. **You MUST ALWAYS use a script or calculator tool** for any math on data returned from API calls. Write a Python script that performs the calculation and prints the result. If the AWS MCP server's `run_script` tool is available, use it. Otherwise, run the script locally. Read `references/deterministic-calculations.md` for patterns and examples. ## Decision Guide | Question | Tool | Reference | |----------|------|-----------| | What am I spending? Where are costs going up? | Cost Explorer | `references/cost-explorer.md` | | How much does a service cost? | Price List API | `references/pricing-lookup.md` | | Where can I save money? (start here) | Cost Optimization Hub | `references/cost-optimization-hub.md` | | Should I buy Savings Plans? | CE SP Recommendations | `references/savings-plans.md` | | Should I buy Reserved Instances? | CE RI Recommendations | `references/reserved-instances.md` | | Deep-dive on a specific EC2/Lambda/EBS/RDS rec? | Compute Optimizer | `references/ec2-rightsizing.md`, `references/lambda-optimization.md`, `references/rds-optimization.md`, `references/ebs-optimization.md` | | How do I set up budget alerts? | Budgets | `references/budgets.md` | | What's causing a cos