Overview
The AWS Metrics Dashboard provides visibility into cloud spending, cost optimization opportunities, resource commitments, budget forecasting, allocation coverage, and operational efficiency across AWS environments. It helps engineering, finance, and cloud operations teams monitor cloud expenditure, identify savings opportunities, and improve cost governance. The dashboard has been expanded with new sections covering Reservations & Savings Plans, Containers & AI, Unit Economics & ROI, a FinOps Scorecard, Governance & Compliance, and Sustainability — giving engineering leaders, FinOps teams, cloud administrators, finance stakeholders, and compliance teams a single place to track cost, risk, and efficiency across AWS.Actions
Executive Summary
A high-level summary view that provides an AI-generated analysis of AWS spending, cost allocation, commitments, forecasting, and optimization opportunities.Export Report
Exports AWS dashboard data and reports. Supports auditing, reporting, budgeting, and external analysis.Overview
What is it?
The default landing tab of the AWS Metrics Dashboard, showing overall spend, spend trend, composition by service and region, and period-over-period movement.Why is it important?
Gives users an immediate, top-level read on how much is being spent, where it’s trending, what’s driving it, and what changed versus the prior period — before drilling into any specific area.Where does it exist?
Overview tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Spend MTD — Total month-to-date spend, including the amortized value and month-over-month change. Forecast EOM — Forecasted end-of-month spend (shows “No budget configured” if a budget hasn’t been set). Active Services — Number of active AWS services in use, and number of linked subscriptions. Untagged Spend — Percentage and dollar amount of spend that has no cost-allocation tags applied.Components Included
Monthly Spend — A trend line comparing actual vs. amortized spend over time. Spend by Service — A ranked bar list of the top 10 services by spend. Spend by Region — A donut chart showing the distribution of spend across AWS regions. Top Movers vs Prior Period — A table comparing each service’s current vs. prior period spend and percentage change, filterable by dimension (e.g., Service).Use Cases
- Quick top-level spend check-ins
- Identifying which services are driving cost
- Spotting untagged or unbudgeted spend
- Comparing spend period-over-period
Allocation & Ownership
What is it?
A view that tracks how well cloud spend is allocated and owned across teams, cost centers, and business units.Why is it important?
Unallocated or unowned spend makes cost accountability difficult. This view helps FinOps and engineering leaders identify where ownership gaps exist and drive better tagging and allocation practices.Where does it exist?
Allocation & Ownership tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Allocation Coverage — Percentage of spend successfully allocated to a team, project, or business unit. Unallocated — Dollar amount of spend that has not been allocated, and the number of resources involved. Ownership Coverage — Percentage of resources with a defined owner. Unowned Resources — Number of resources without an owner, and the associated unowned spend. Cost Centers — Number of active cost centers. Accountable Spend — Dollar amount of spend (actual and amortized) that is tied to an accountable owner.Components Included
Spend by Scope — A bar breakdown of spend that can be viewed by Team, Owner, Cost Center, Account, Org Unit (OU), or Environment. Tag Coverage by Key — Shows coverage of required tagging keys across resources. Owned Resources by Team — Breaks down owned resources by team. Cost Allocation by Business Unit — A table showing actual and amortized spend, and percentage of total, per business unit. Top Unowned Spend ($/mo) — Lists the highest-spending resources that currently have no owner. Ownership Coverage Trend (%) — Tracks ownership coverage over time.Use Cases
- Cost allocation governance
- Chargeback and showback reporting
- Team- and owner-level accountability
- Closing tagging and ownership gaps
Budgets & Guardrails
What is it?
A view for tracking budgets, spend guardrails, and budget alerts across the organization.Why is it important?
Helps finance and cloud teams stay ahead of overspend by tracking budget utilization, alert activity, and forecasted overruns before they happen.Where does it exist?
Budgets & Guardrails tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Total Budget — Total budget set for the current month. Actual MTD — Actual month-to-date spend and percentage of budget used. Forecasted Overrun — Forecasted amount by which spend is expected to exceed budget. Active Alerts — Number of currently active budget alerts. Utilization — Percentage of budget used to date. Guardrail Compliance — Overall compliance rate against configured spending guardrails.Components Included
Budget vs Actual by Month — A bar chart comparing budgeted, actual, and amortized spend by month, with an amortized line overlay. Budget Alerts Fired by Type — Breaks down triggered budget alerts by alert type. Configured Budget Alerts — Lists the budget alerts currently configured. Budget Entities — A detailed table of individual budgets, including scope, budgeted amount, actual spend, forecast, variance, and status (e.g., OK). 3-Month Forecast — A forward-looking forecast view, toggleable between Cost, Usage, and CE-native (Cost Explorer–native) modes.Use Cases
- Budget monitoring and enforcement
- Proactive overrun prevention
- Alert configuration and review
- Budget-level variance analysis
Anomalies
What is it?
A view dedicated to detecting, investigating, and tracking unexpected cost anomalies.Why is it important?
Helps teams catch unexpected spend spikes early, understand root causes, and track how quickly anomalies are detected and resolved.Where does it exist?
Anomalies tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Anomalies Detected — Total number of anomalies detected in the selected period. Critical — Number of anomalies classified as critical severity. Est. Impact — Estimated dollar impact of detected anomalies. MTTD — Mean time to detect an anomaly. Resolved — Number of anomalies that have been resolved. Open Investigations — Number of currently active investigations.Components Included
Spend vs Expected Baseline — Compares actual spend against the expected baseline to visualize where and when anomalies occurred. Anomaly Severity Distribution — Breaks down detected anomalies by severity level. Investigation Insights — Top Causes — Shows the share of anomalies matching each identified root cause. Anomaly Feed — A running feed of detected anomalies, ordered by impact.Use Cases
- Cost anomaly detection and triage
- Root-cause investigation
- Incident response for unexpected spend
- Tracking detection and resolution speed
Optimization
What is it?
A view that surfaces cost-saving recommendations, rightsizing opportunities, and resource waste across the AWS environment.Why is it important?
Consolidates optimization opportunities — from rightsizing to waste cleanup — into one place, helping teams reduce spend without manually digging through every service.Where does it exist?
Optimization tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Recommendations — Number of active recommendations, and their source (e.g., Compute Optimizer). Savings / Mo — Estimated monthly savings if all recommendations were adopted. Avg CPU — Average CPU utilization and number of rightsizing recommendations it’s based on. Idle Resources — Number of resources flagged as idle. Waste / Mo — Estimated monthly wasted spend. Reclaimed — Dollar amount of spend reclaimed in the last 30 days.Components Included
Savings Opportunity by Type ($K/mo) — Bar breakdown of savings opportunities by type (e.g., commitment opportunity). Recommendations by Status — Donut chart showing recommendations grouped by status (e.g., Pending). Top Rightsizing Recommendations — Lists the highest-impact rightsizing recommendations. Waste by Type — Breaks down wasted spend by type, with total potential monthly savings. Auto-Clean Rules — Lists any configured rules for automatically cleaning up waste (e.g., unused resources).Use Cases
- Rightsizing and resource optimization
- Idle resource identification
- Waste reduction
- Automating resource cleanup
Reservations & Savings Plans
What is it?
A dedicated view for tracking Reserved Instance and Savings Plan performance, including coverage, utilization, pricing model mix, and upcoming expirations.Why is it important?
Helps FinOps and cloud teams maximize the return on committed-use spend, avoid uncovered on-demand costs, and prevent commitment waste from unused or expiring contracts.Where does it exist?
Reservations & Savings Plans tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Commitment Coverage — Percentage of eligible usage covered by a commitment, with the number of commitments tracked. Avg Utilization — Average utilization rate across active commitments. On-Demand Uncovered — Dollar amount of spend still running at on-demand rates. Annualized Savings — Net savings from commitments, annualized. Expiring (90D) — Number or value of commitments expiring within the next 90 days. Unused Commitment — Dollar value of committed spend that is going unused.Components Included
Coverage vs Utilization Trend — A time-series chart comparing coverage % and utilization % over the selected period, helping identify gaps between what’s committed and what’s actually used. Portfolio by Term (Count) — Breaks down the commitment portfolio by contract term length. Cost by Pricing Model — Bar chart showing spend distribution across pricing models (e.g., On-Demand, Savings Plan). Spot & Unused Commitment — Bar chart highlighting spend on Spot capacity versus unused committed capacity. Expiring in 90 Days — Lists upcoming commitment expirations and includes a Simulate action that models the impact of renewing or resizing a commitment, returning estimated monthly savings, savings percentage, estimated ROI, hourly commitment rate, current on-demand spend, and estimated total cost. Cost Explorer Recommendations — A list of AWS Cost Explorer–sourced recommendations, such as increasing Savings Plan or RI coverage, with estimated effort and severity.Use Cases
- Reserved Instance and Savings Plan planning
- Identifying uncovered on-demand spend
- Preventing commitment waste
- Renewal and expiration planning
- Cost optimization through commitment simulation
Containers & AI
What is it?
A view that tracks costs and utilization for containerized workloads (EKS) alongside AI/ML spend and workload costs.Why is it important?
Container and AI workloads are often variable and fast-growing cost centers. This view gives engineering and FinOps teams visibility into cluster efficiency and AI spend before costs scale out of control.Where does it exist?
Containers & AI tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
EKS Clusters — Number of active EKS clusters being tracked. EKS Cost / Mo — Monthly cost attributed to EKS clusters. Idle Capacity — Amount of provisioned capacity not being utilized. AI Spend MTD — Month-to-date AI spend, broken down by number of workloads and models in use. AI Billed Cost — Total billed cost associated with AI usage.Components Included
EKS Cost by Namespace — Breaks down Kubernetes cost by namespace to identify which teams or services are driving container spend. Cluster CPU Utilization (%) — Tracks CPU utilization across clusters to surface over- or under-provisioned capacity. AI Spend by Model — Breaks down AI spend by the underlying model in use. Cost by AI Workload — Breaks down AI cost by individual workload.Use Cases
- Kubernetes cost allocation
- Identifying idle container capacity
- AI/ML cost monitoring
- Model-level and workload-level cost accountability
Unit Economics & ROI
What is it?
A view that translates cloud spend into business-relevant unit economics, and tracks the return on investment of FinOps and optimization initiatives.Why is it important?
Connects infrastructure cost to business outcomes — cost per customer, per transaction, and per feature — while also quantifying whether cost-saving initiatives are delivering the results they were planned for.Where does it exist?
Unit Economics & ROI tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Cost / Customer — Average cloud cost attributable to a single customer. Cost / 1K Txns — Cloud cost per 1,000 transactions. AI % of Revenue — AI spend expressed as a percentage of revenue. Gross Margin — Gross margin after accounting for cloud costs. Savings Pipeline — Total value of identified but not-yet-realized savings initiatives. Realized (MTD) — Savings realized month-to-date. ROI (Realized) — Return on investment from realized savings initiatives. Payback — Estimated payback period for optimization investments.Components Included
Planned vs Realized Savings — Compares the savings that were planned against what has actually been realized. Cloud Cost per Product Line ($/Customer) — Breaks down cloud cost per customer by product line. Cost per Feature — Breaks down cloud cost by individual product feature. ROI by Initiative Type — Compares ROI across different categories of optimization initiatives. Initiative Tracker — Tracks the status of active cost-optimization initiatives. Top Recommendations by Estimated Savings — A table of recommendations (e.g., “Increase Savings Plan / RI coverage”) with estimated savings, priority, and current state (e.g., Open).Use Cases
- Cost-to-revenue analysis
- Product- and feature-level cost accountability
- Tracking initiative ROI and payback
- Prioritizing optimization initiatives by savings impact
FinOps Scorecard
What is it?
A scorecard summarizing the organization’s overall FinOps maturity, spend run-rate, forecast accuracy, and savings realization.Why is it important?
Gives leadership a single, trackable measure of how mature and effective the organization’s FinOps practice is over time, and where capability gaps remain.Where does it exist?
FinOps Scorecard tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Monthly Run-Rate — Current monthly spend run-rate. Budget Variance — Variance between actual spend and budget. Realized Savings — Total savings realized in the period. Forecast Accuracy — Accuracy of prior spend forecasts against actuals. Allocation Coverage — Percentage of spend successfully allocated to a team, project, or business unit. FinOps Score — Composite score reflecting overall FinOps maturity. Compliance Score — Composite score reflecting governance and policy compliance.Components Included
Monthly Run-Rate Trend ($M) — Line chart tracking the monthly spend run-rate over time. Maturity by FinOps Capability (%) — Breaks down FinOps maturity across the five core capabilities: Allocate, Govern, Inform, Operate, and Optimize. Forecast Accuracy by Closed Month — Tracks forecast-vs-actual accuracy for each closed reporting month. Cost by Business Unit — Donut chart showing total spend broken down by business unit, including unallocated spend. Savings Funnel ($M) — Funnel view showing savings that were Planned, Actioned, and Realized.Use Cases
- Tracking FinOps program maturity over time
- Executive FinOps reporting
- Identifying capability gaps (e.g., low “optimize” maturity)
- Monitoring forecast accuracy and budget discipline
Governance & Compliance
What is it?
A view that tracks policy compliance, control health, and open governance findings across the AWS environment.Why is it important?
Helps cloud governance and security teams monitor policy adherence, track remediation of failing controls, and maintain audit readiness.Where does it exist?
Governance & Compliance tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Compliance Score — Overall compliance score, based on the number of controls evaluated. Open Violations — Number of open policy violations, out of total findings. Tags Enforced — Rate of required tagging policy enforcement. Policy Pass Rate — Percentage of policy checks currently passing. Failed Controls — Number of failed controls, out of total controls reviewed. Audit Readiness — Indicator of overall audit readiness.Components Included
Compliance Score Trend — Line chart tracking the compliance score over time. Remediation Aging (Open Issues) — Bar chart showing how long open issues have remained unresolved. Score by Business Unit (/100) — Breaks down the compliance score by business unit. Policy Pass / Fail by Control Family — Horizontal bar chart comparing pass/fail counts across control families (e.g., S3, EC2, Cloud Config). Recent Failing Findings — A detailed table of recent failing findings, including control family, policy, affected resource, severity, and detection timestamp. Data Pipeline — Shows the health of the underlying data pipelines that feed the dashboard (e.g., cost usage, commitment coverage, recommendations, anomalies, forecast), including an overall status (e.g., Degraded) and per-pipeline status (OK, Failed, Stale) with data freshness lag.Use Cases
- Policy and control compliance monitoring
- Audit preparation
- Remediation tracking
- Identifying which business units or control families need attention
- Monitoring the health/freshness of dashboard data pipelines
Sustainability
What is it?
A view that tracks the carbon footprint of AWS usage, including regional emissions, per-service breakdowns, and trends over time.Why is it important?
Helps organizations understand and reduce the environmental impact of their cloud usage, and supports sustainability and low-carbon region adoption goals.Where does it exist?
Sustainability tab in the Navigation Tabs bar.KPIs Included
Emissions — Total emissions (tCO2e) for the selected reporting period. **Per 1,000 of cloud spend. Low-Carbon Region Adoption — Percentage of workloads running in low-carbon AWS regions. MoM Change — Month-over-month change in emissions.Components Included
Emissions by Region (tCO2e) — Breaks down emissions by AWS region. Emissions by Service (tCO2e) — Breaks down emissions by AWS service. Monthly Emissions Trend (tCO2e) — Tracks emissions over time on a monthly basis.Use Cases
- Carbon footprint tracking
- Sustainability reporting
- Low-carbon region migration planning
- ESG and corporate sustainability initiatives