A finance team wants (a) to visualize WHERE last quarter's spend went by service, and (b) alerts when next month's forecast exceeds a threshold. Which two tools map to these needs?
A.Cost Explorer for analysis + AWS Budgets for forecast alerts
Correct. Explorer = where money went/forecast; Budgets = threshold alerting.
B.AWS Budgets for analysis + Cost Explorer for alerts
The roles are reversed.
C.Trusted Advisor for both
Trusted Advisor gives optimization recommendations, not spend analysis/forecast alerts.
D.Cost and Usage Report for alerts + Cost Explorer for analysis
CUR is raw billing data files — not the alerting tool.
Why this answer
Cost Explorer analyzes historical and forecasted spend (visualizations, filters by service/tag); AWS Budgets sets thresholds and alerts on actual or forecasted overruns. The exam tests this analysis-vs-alerting split constantly.
Correct answer: A · Last reviewed 2026-10-26
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Answer without seeing the solution first in the Billing & Support practice session.
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