Understanding Amazon Pricing Calculator concepts
To help you get started, this page explains the key concepts of the in-console Amazon Pricing Calculator and how they interact.
Key concepts
The in-console Amazon Pricing Calculator enables you to estimate your planned cloud costs using your discount rates and purchase commitments. Here are the key concepts you'll work within the Pricing Calculator.
Before discount rates
The before discount rates refer to the public, On-Demand pricing for Amazon services, without any discounts or commitments applied. These are the standard rates that are available to any Amazon customer. For more information, see Before discount rates.
After discount rates
After discount rates refer to what you pay for Amazon services, after applying any pricing discounts you have with Amazon. For more information, see After discount rates.
Workload estimate
A workload estimate represents the incremental Amazon usage you want to model. You can add and modify usage details in a workload estimate. However, workload estimates don’t allow you to model changes to your Amazon commitments. You can refer to a workload estimate resource using an Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For more information about workload estimates, see Workload estimates.
Usage
This represents your general Amazon usage across all services, showing how much of each product is used.
Commitments
This represents your Amazon commitments like Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, which provide discounted
pricing in exchange for a term-based commitment. For more information, see Compute and EC2 Instance Savings Plans
Note
You can’t use a workload estimate to model your commitments.
Bill scenario
A bill scenario acts as a container that allows you to model anticipated usage and commitments for future needs. You can refer to a bill scenario resource using an ARN. For more information, see Bill estimates.
Bill estimate
A bill estimate incorporates all inputs from a bill scenario together with your usage and commitments from the most recent anniversary bill to calculate estimated costs. The pre-tax cost of the entire consolidated billing family will be displayed. You can refer to a bill estimate resource using an ARN. For more information, see Bill estimates.
Note
Bill estimates are only available to management and standalone accounts.
Groups
You can organize your estimates by defining groups. A group can reflect how your company is organized. A group can also reflect other organization methods, such as by product stack or product architecture. For example, if you want to price out different ways to build your Amazon setup, you can use different groups for each variation of your setup and compare the estimates.
Anniversary bill
This is the line items for services that you used during the month. For more information about billing term definitions, see Billing details in the Amazon Data Exports User Guide.