AWS Cost Explorer and Sabaki: the differences
Sabaki is not a replacement for AWS Cost Explorer. Sabaki's cost screen is built from Cost Explorer's data. What differs is how it is shown and what it is for. Cost Explorer is an analysis tool that lets you drill into the costs of one account — or one organization — however you like, down to tags and usage types. Sabaki exists to put several unrelated customers' accounts on one screen, find the resources that were left behind, and explain them alongside an estimate of what they cost per month. Cost trends can be shared even with a customer who holds no AWS permissions.
Last updated: 2026-09-22
What AWS Cost Explorer does
Cost Explorer is the cost analysis feature built into the AWS console, and using it from the console is free. The console is available in English.
You can filter and group past cost and usage by service, linked account, region, usage type, cost allocation tags and more. By default it works with the last 13 months of data, and it will forecast future cost as well. Reserved Instance and Savings Plans purchase recommendations, along with the utilisation and coverage reports, are here too. Hourly granularity carries an extra charge once it is switched on.
Drilling in on “which tag's cost went up last month?” or “what is this usage type?” is what Cost Explorer does best, and Sabaki has no such feature.
Where Cost Explorer stops being enough
Cost Explorer belongs to the account you are signed in to. If you look after several customers' accounts that are not gathered under AWS Organizations, you end up signing in again and repeating the same steps once per customer.
What Cost Explorer shows, too, is what was spent on what. Listing the EBS volumes attached to no instance or the Elastic IPs allocated to nothing, one by one, is not its job: in AWS that falls to Cost Optimization Hub, Compute Optimizer and Trusted Advisor. Those work per account or per organization as well, and have to be enabled. Trusted Advisor's cost optimisation checks need a Business Support+ support plan or higher.
The other one is sharing. To explain costs to a customer by having them look at Cost Explorer themselves, you have to prepare permissions — IAM access to billing information among them — and explain how to read the screen.
Feature comparison
Correct as of September 2026. AWS features and prices change, so check the AWS documentation for the current specification.
| Item | AWS Cost Explorer | Sabaki |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | An analysis tool for drilling into cost however you like | A screen that lines up several customers' costs, finds the waste and explains it |
| Where the data comes from | AWS billing data | Cost Explorer data (through a read-only role) |
| Several customers' accounts | Sign in to each account (inside one organization they can be seen together) | Accounts in no organization are on one screen too, switched customer by customer |
| How deep it goes | Service, account, region, usage type, tags and more | Monthly and daily trends, this month so far, and the breakdown by service |
| Cost forecasting | Yes | No |
| Finding resources left behind | Out of scope (Cost Optimization Hub and others cover it) | Finds idle EC2 and RDS, unattached EBS and unused Elastic IPs in the regions where cost was incurred in the last 30 days, and works out a monthly estimate |
| Explanations | The console is available in English | Every finding comes explained: why it is waste, and what to do about it |
| RI / Savings Plans / right-sizing recommendations | Yes | On Pro, AWS's recommendations are pulled in and added to the list |
| Sharing with the customer | Prepare IAM permissions so the customer can look | From Business, the client share view shares cost trends and notifications (the customer needs no AWS permissions). The client-facing proposal that gathers the findings is Pro |
| How often it refreshes | At least once every 24 hours | Automatic every night; you can also re-analyse by hand (up to three times a day) |
| Price | The console is free; the API costs $0.01 per request | Free ($0, 1 account) covers cost trends, all four detections and the AI's savings recommendations. Unlimited accounts start at Team ($19 per month, tax excluded). Pulling in AWS's recommendations is Pro |
What to know before using Sabaki
Sabaki calls the Cost Explorer API in the connected AWS account with a read-only role. That API's cost ($0.01 per request) is billed to the account being queried — the AWS account you connected. Most of the calls fall in the automatic refresh each night, and storing results to reuse them keeps the count down, though not to zero. When those calls happen is set out in “Does connecting Sabaki cost anything on the AWS side?” in the help.
The monthly figure on a detected resource is an estimate worked out from the On-Demand rates in the AWS price list. EC2 assumes Linux and shared tenancy, and it reflects neither Reserved Instance or Savings Plans discounts nor RDS storage and I/O charges. It may not match the actual bill.
Sabaki goes as far as the proposal. It deletes no resources and buys nothing, and without write permissions it could not.
Which to use when
If you want to analyse the costs of a single organization of your own in depth, Cost Explorer is enough. Sabaki earns its place when you look after a separate account per customer and have to explain, every month, which customer's costs went up where and what can be cut. When you do need to drill in, the efficient route is to find the spot in Sabaki and then open that account's Cost Explorer.
Getting started
You create one read-only IAM role and connect it. There are three ways to choose from — a one-click CloudFormation template, the IAM console, or the CLI — and the template is public. The detection conditions and the differences between Free and Pro are in AWS cost visibility and savings recommendations, and how to find the resources left behind with AWS's own features alone is in How to find unused AWS resources.
Connect one read-only role and the first results come back in minutes
The Free plan covers one account and one seat, with no credit card. All it needs is a read-only IAM role — no access keys, and no write permissions.
Related questions
- Do you really not need access keys?
- What permissions does the read-only role include?
- Does connecting Sabaki cost anything on the AWS side?
- How much can I expect to save?
- When are savings recommendations updated?
- Does Sabaki delete resources automatically?
- How are AWS Organizations member accounts handled?
Related guides
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