FAQs

You can get started using AWS Data Exports by navigating to the AWS Data Exports page in the Billing and Cost Management console or by accessing the AWS Data Exports API in the AWS CLI/SDKs. From here you can create an export by visually selecting the table and columns to export or by writing a query using basic SQL (column selection and row-filtering) and then specifying all delivery preferences.

AWS Data Exports allows you to write queries using basic SQL on tables that AWS provides of your billing and cost management data. Exports are delivered on a recurring basis.

AWS Data Exports allows you to customize your billing and cost management data using basic SQL so you can select only the data you want to process. You can create different views that include only the data that your stakeholders are allowed to see, or remove the data that you don’t need to reduce the size of the export. Also, with a SQL interface, AWS Data Exports ensures that you always receive your data with the schema and contents you specify.

AWS Data Exports allows you to create exports of three different tables:

1. Cost and Usage Report (CUR) 2.0: Contains your most granular cost and usage data from AWS.
2. FOCUS 1.0 with AWS Columns: Contains your cost and usage data formatted with the open-source FOCUS 1.0 specification.
3. Cost Optimization Recommendations (from Cost Optimization Hub): Contains your AWS cost optimization recommendations consolidated by Cost Optimization Hub.

CUR 2.0 provides the following improvements over CUR: 1/ Consistent schema – The CUR 2.0 table always contains a fixed set of columns whereas CUR dynamically includes columns in your report based on your usage in a given month. 2/ Nested data – CUR 2.0 reduces data sparsity by collapsing certain columns from CUR into individual columns with key-value pairs of the collapsed columns. The nested keys can optionally be queried in AWS Data Exports as separate columns to match the original CUR schema and data. 3/ Additional columns – CUR 2.0 contains two additional columns ‘bill_payer_account_name’ and ‘line_item_usage_account_name’.

The CUR 2.0 is the most detailed source of AWS cost and usage data and is recommended for your most complex Cloud Financial Management tasks. For example, the CUR 2.0 has the option to contain split cost allocation data which provides a detailed breakdown of your EKS and ECS container costs. This data is not currently available in FOCUS 1.0. The FOCUS 1.0 with AWS Columns export is recommended when you are looking for standardization of cost and usage data across multiple cloud or software vendors.

Exports of your cost optimization recommendations make it easier to bring your recommendations into other tools, such as Business Intelligence dashboards or analytics services, to share savings opportunities with stakeholders or track your cloud optimization progress. Many customers find export files easier to work with compared to using the paginated APIs of the Cost Optimization Hub feature.