How to Set Up an AWS Billing Alarm: Stay on Top of Your Cloud Costs

Managing your cloud costs is crucial, especially when you’re running services on AWS. One of the best ways to avoid unexpected surprises on your bill is by setting up a billing alarm. In this guide, I’ll show you how to create an AWS billing alarm step by step, ensuring you stay on top of your expenses with ease. Let’s dive in and get those costs under control!

What is Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service that provides actionable insights into your AWS resources and applications. It collects and tracks metrics, collects and monitors log files, and sets alarms. In this guide, we’ll be using CloudWatch to set up a billing alarm, which helps you monitor your cloud costs and ensures you stay within your budget.

Prerequisites

Before diving into creating your billing alarm, there are a couple of things you need to do:

1. Enable Billing Alerts

Why? CloudWatch needs access to your billing data to monitor your expenses effectively.

How?

• Open the AWS Billing Console.
• Navigate to Billing Preferences.
  URL: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/preferences