AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)
What is AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)?
The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is the most detailed billing dataset Amazon Web Services provides, listing costs and usage by resource and time period, delivered as files to an Amazon S3 bucket.
Updated November 2026 · 5 min read
The AWS Cost and Usage Report, usually called the CUR, is the raw data behind an AWS bill. Where the monthly invoice shows totals by service, the CUR contains a line for each combination of resource, usage type, pricing and time period, with columns describing the account, region, pricing model, discounts, tags and much more. A large organization's CUR can contain many millions of rows each month. AWS delivers it as files to an Amazon S3 bucket chosen by the customer, where it can be loaded into analytics tools, data warehouses or FinOps platforms.
Most serious analysis of AWS costs relies on the CUR, either directly or through tools that read it. AWS has introduced CUR 2.0 through its Data Exports service, alongside the legacy version, and also offers exports in the FOCUS format. For IT financial management, the CUR is the authoritative source for allocating, analyzing and reconciling AWS costs.
Definition of AWS Cost and Usage Report
The AWS Cost and Usage Report is a configurable data export that provides line-item detail of AWS costs and usage, including pricing, discounts, credits, refunds, taxes and resource tags. It can be generated at hourly, daily or monthly granularity and in formats such as CSV or Parquet.
The report is updated several times a day during the month and finalized after the bill is issued. It is one of several AWS billing data sources, alongside tools such as AWS Cost Explorer, which present summarized views of the same underlying data.
What It Contains
Each row identifies the account, service, usage type, operation, region and, where enabled, the specific resource. It includes usage quantities, rates and costs under several cost measures, such as unblended, net and amortized costs.
Columns describe pricing terms, such as on-demand, reserved instances, savings plans and spot, and show how commitment discounts were applied. Activated cost allocation tags appear as columns, allowing costs to be grouped by team or application.
The report also includes credits, refunds, support charges, marketplace purchases and taxes, so the total can be reconciled with the invoice.
CUR 2.0 and FOCUS Exports
AWS Data Exports provides CUR 2.0, a newer version with a consistent schema, and continues to support the legacy CUR. CUR 2.0 allows users to choose which columns to include and offers additional fields.
AWS also supports exports in the FOCUS specification, the FinOps Foundation's standard format for cost and usage data. FOCUS exports make it easier to combine AWS data with data from other cloud providers and SaaS vendors.
Organizations choosing between formats should consider which tools they use, whether they operate across several providers and how much AWS-specific detail they need.
Importance of the CUR in IT Financial Management
The CUR is the most complete and detailed source of AWS cost information. Most AWS cost allocation, optimization analysis and reconciliation depends on it.
It also provides the granularity needed for advanced analysis. Hourly, resource-level data reveals patterns, such as resources that run only at night or scale unexpectedly, that monthly totals hide.
Summary tools are useful for quick questions, but they cannot support custom allocation rules, joins with business data or detailed audits the way the raw data can.
Allocation and Analysis
With the CUR, organizations can allocate costs using accounts, tags and custom rules, including splitting shared costs and allocating commitment discounts to the teams whose usage they cover. This supports cloud cost allocation at any level of detail.
Analysts can study usage patterns by hour and resource to identify idle resources, rightsizing opportunities and commitment coverage gaps.
The CUR can also be joined with business data, such as transactions or customers, to calculate cloud unit economics.
Reconciliation and Accounting
Because the CUR includes every charge, credit and tax, it can be reconciled with the AWS invoice. This gives finance confidence that reported costs are complete.
The CUR's amortized cost columns spread upfront commitment payments over the commitment term, supporting accrual-based reporting consistent with accrual accounting.
These features make the CUR the basis for monthly close processes and audits of cloud spending.
How to Use the CUR
Using the CUR involves setting up the export, storing and processing the data, and building reports or feeding it into tools. Its size and complexity require some planning.
Many organizations rely on FinOps platforms that read the CUR, while others build their own pipelines into a data warehouse. The second approach gives more control and makes it easier to join cost data with business data, but requires data engineering skills to maintain.
Setting Up
Create the export from the management account of the AWS organization, so that it covers all linked accounts. Choose the format, granularity and columns, including resource IDs and the cost measures needed.
Activate the cost allocation tags the organization uses, so they appear in the report. Configure the S3 bucket with appropriate access controls and retention.
Choose Parquet format for large datasets, since it is more efficient to query and store than CSV, especially as the data grows over many months.
Processing and Reporting
Load the data into an analytics service, data warehouse or FinOps platform. AWS services such as Amazon Athena can query CUR files directly in S3.
Understand which cost measure to use for each purpose, for example amortized cost for team reporting and unblended cost for reconciling with the invoice, as explained in blended vs unblended cost.
Automate the pipeline so that reports refresh as AWS updates the data during the month. Make sure earlier versions of the month's data are replaced, not added, to avoid double counting.
Examples of the CUR in IT Financial Management
The examples below show how organizations use the CUR.
Both use illustrative figures for companies with significant AWS spending.
In each, the detailed data supported analysis that summary views could not.
Allocating Commitments
A company buys savings plans centrally for $500,000 a month in commitments. Its summary reports show the discounts only in the central account, so product teams see on-demand prices.
Using the CUR's savings plan columns, the FinOps team allocates each team its share of the discounted cost based on the usage the commitments covered. Teams now see their effective costs, about 28% below on-demand prices.
Joining With Business Data
Another company loads its CUR into its data warehouse and joins it with daily order volumes. It calculates that cloud cost per thousand orders is $46 for one product and $19 for another with similar functionality.
Analysis of the line items shows that the first product stores and reprocesses far more data per order. Redesigning its data pipeline brings its cost down to $27 per thousand orders.
Conclusion
The AWS Cost and Usage Report is the most detailed billing dataset AWS provides, listing costs and usage by resource and time period with pricing, discount and tag information. It is available as CUR 2.0 through AWS Data Exports, alongside the legacy CUR, and AWS also offers FOCUS-formatted exports.
In IT financial management, the CUR is the authoritative source for AWS cost allocation, analysis and reconciliation. Setting it up across the whole organization, activating tags, choosing the right cost measures and processing it in an appropriate analytics tool help organizations get full value from AWS cost data.
Related terms
Cost Allocation Tags
Cost allocation tags are metadata labels on cloud resources that are included in billing data, allowing cloud costs to be grouped and reported by attributes such as team, application, environment or cost center.
FOCUS Specification
The FOCUS specification, or FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification, is an open FinOps Foundation standard that defines a common format for billing data across cloud, SaaS and other providers.
Cloud Cost Allocation
Cloud cost allocation is the process of assigning cloud costs to the teams, products, environments and business units that use them, using account structures, tags and rules for dividing shared costs.
Cloud Unit Economics
Cloud unit economics measures cloud costs per unit of business activity, such as cost per customer, transaction or order, to show whether cloud spending is efficient as the business grows.