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14/08/2026•AWS•Cloudino Expert

4 Steps to Optimize Cloud Costs Effectively with AWS Managed Dashboards

For Cloud Engineers, FinOps specialists, or IT infrastructure managers, using **AWS Managed Dashboards** to monitor and control budgets is one of the leading optimal solutions today. Previously, to build a visual cost reporting system, administrators often had to manually create each widget, combine data manually from AWS Cost Explorer, and spend a lot of time fine-tuning the interface.

4 Steps to Optimize Cloud Costs Effectively with AWS Managed Dashboards

For Cloud Engineers, FinOps specialists, or IT infrastructure managers, using AWS Managed Dashboards to monitor and control budgets is one of the leading optimal solutions today. Previously, to build a visual cost reporting system, administrators often had to manually create each widget, combine data manually from AWS Cost Explorer, and spend a lot of time fine-tuning the interface.

Recognizing this barrier, AWS officially launched the AWS Managed Dashboards feature right within the AWS Billing and Cost Management (BCM) interface. This article will guide you on how to make the most of this new tool to simplify your cloud financial management process.

What is AWS Managed Dashboards?

The BCM Dashboards console showing the Managed tab with five preconfigured dashboards listed: Cost Overview and Trends, Compute, Database, Reservations, and Savings Plans, each with a brief description of its purpose.

In essence, AWS Managed Dashboards are a set of pre-configured dashboards standard in read-only mode. Upon accessing the BCM Dashboards interface, the system will automatically display and connect directly with the spending data in your AWS account.

The outstanding advantage of AWS Managed Dashboards is readiness: No widget setup needed, no complex configuration required, open it up to get actionable deep insights immediately. The entire reporting structure is built based on cost management standards from thousands of large enterprises worldwide.

Core Features of AWS Managed Dashboards

The AWS Managed Dashboards system automatically categorizes your data into 5 detailed dashboards across 3 core functional groups:

  • Group 1 – Overview and Trends (Cost Overview and Trends): Acts as the overall financial picture. This dashboard supports tracking spending fluctuations by service, account, and region over a 12-month cycle, while integrating forecasting algorithms for future costs.
  • Group 2 – Key Services Analysis (Compute & Database):
    • Compute: Details the budget allocated for EC2, ECS, EKS, AWS Lambda, etc., tied to the effectiveness of applied discount plans.
    • Database: Statistics on costs from RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, etc., by engine type and deployment model.
  • Group 3 – Spending Commitment Management (Reservations & Savings Plans): Helps businesses accurately measure the waste rate or effectiveness of subscribed Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.

4 Steps to Apply AWS Managed Dashboards in Practice

To optimize daily workflows, you can apply AWS Managed Dashboards following the 4 standard steps below:

Step 1: Evaluate the overall spending picture

The Cost Overview and Trends managed dashboard showing three widgets: a bar chart of total current and forecasted cost from August 2025 through November 2026 with an 80% prediction interval, a bar chart of committed versus flexible spend split by On Demand, Savings Plans, and Reserved purchase types, and a Budget Health table listing budgets with their spend, forecasted amounts, threshold status, and current versus budgeted percentages.

Start by accessing the Cost Overview and Trends dashboard on AWS Managed Dashboards. Check the ratio between On-Demand costs (list price) and discounted amounts. Observe the forecast chart to make timely adjustments if there are signs of exceeding the quarterly budget.

Step 2: Breakdown and identify root causes of fluctuations

When detecting abnormal cost increases, switch to the Compute or Database dashboard. Analyzing the running hours chart will help you determine whether the increase is due to real system demand or redundant resources, enabling appropriate server rightsizing decisions.

Step 3: Review and optimize commitment plans

In the AWS Managed Dashboards interface, proceed to open the Savings Plans and Reservations dashboards. Thoroughly review plans about to expire or those with low utilization rates to plan timely renewals or adjustments, ensuring the system operates at optimal cost efficiency.

The Savings Plans managed dashboard displaying three widgets: a line chart showing total monthly cost trending upward from around $25,000 to over $75,000 between August 2025 and July 2026, a stacked bar chart of on-demand spend broken down by service including Relational Database Service, EC2-Instances, Support, QuickSight, and others, and a Savings Plans Utilization table listing individual plans with account, type, instance family, region, status, utilization rate, and commitment amounts.

Step 4: Customize and Automate Reports

Although AWS Managed Dashboards cannot be edited by default, you can completely duplicate them with a single click:

  • Freely add/remove metrics, change timeframes, or filter data by tags for each department.
  • Export reports in PDF/CSV format or schedule automated periodic emails to stakeholders. You can also combine this data with your enterprise’s Cloud infrastructure optimization process. (Note: Replace this internal link with a relevant article on your website).

Read more at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-cloud-financial-management/aws-billing-and-cost-management-dashboards-introduces-managed-dashboards-for-instant-cloud-financial-visibility/

Conclusion

The launch of AWS Managed Dashboards marks an important step forward for AWS in simplifying FinOps for enterprises. Far from being just a simple data visualization tool, this serves as a benchmark framework helping technical and financial teams easily find common ground, eliminating cost blind spots, and maximizing return on cloud investments.

This feature is currently integrated completely free of charge across all commercial AWS accounts. Get started by visiting the AWS Billing console, navigating to Dashboards (Managed tab) to upgrade your cloud financial management process today.

Learn more about the service: https://osam.io/aws-cost-optimization/