What does AWS Billing and Cost Management allow users to do?

AWS Billing and Cost Management offers users a comprehensive platform to monitor and pay for their service usage. Through this service, users can track their spending across various AWS services in real-time, ensuring they stay informed about their costs and can manage their budgets effectively. It provides detailed billing information, usage reports, and cost exploration tools that empower users to visualize their costs over time.

This functionality is crucial for organizations that need to manage budgets tightly and make informed decisions based on their cloud resource usage. Users can receive alerts for budget thresholds, analyze historical usage, and gain insights into where costs can be optimized.

In contrast, while estimating future costs for EC2 instances could be part of a broader financial planning strategy, AWS Billing and Cost Management primarily focuses on the current and historical aspects of billing rather than forecasts. Managing user access is an administrative function that pertains more to AWS Identity and Access Management, and refunds for unused services are generally not a feature provided directly through Billing and Cost Management, as payments and refunds are subject to AWS’s standard terms of service.