Billing Alarm that Measures Credits Spent / Resource Usage

Question

I've created a Cloudwatch billing alarm to measure "EstimatedCharges". However, because we are on credits, it always shows as 0.
Is there any way to set a billing alarm that measures either credits spent or just does not include the credits in the metric so it measures the actual resources used?

Matt-B · Accepted Answer

Hi THere

You wont be able to do this with a CloudWatch alarm because the `EstimatedCharges` metric always includes credits.

You can do it another way by using AWS Budgets.  In AWS Budgets, you can set a spend limit and get alerted when you spend is exceeding that limit.  You have control over the charge types like excluding Credits, discounts, etc.  See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/create-cost-budget.html

Example Budget setup:

![Enter image description here](/media/postImages/original/IMakoFPPLLQnW4_ZAA1j2wZQ)

Billing Alarm that Measures Credits Spent / Resource Usage

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