CLOUD INTEGRATION

AWS Cost Management: One Table for Your Whole Cloud Bill

Cost Explorer won’t go deep, CUR needs SQL, invoices are too coarse — and it’s AWS-only. Mof unifies AWS with your other clouds in one read-only table: real payable, allocation, alerts and Excel export.

Documentation

AWS native · roll your own

Cost Explorer

CUR / Data Export

S3 + Glue

Athena

SELECT sum(line_item_unblended_cost) FROM cur WHERE …

Build a database, write SQL — and Athena still bills $5/TB scanned

Mof · one read-only key

Read-only key

Auto-sync

Full dashboard

Real payable

One table

Smart alerts

Excel export

Works out of the box — no SQL, no extra query fees

Why teams use Mof to manage AWS cost

Plenty of teams run EC2, S3, RDS and CloudFront on AWS and read the bill either coarsely in Cost Explorer or by exporting CUR and writing SQL in Athena. Once resources span accounts (Organizations) — and you also run other clouds — “why did this month cost more?” and “which team owns this?” take several consoles to answer.

Mof is a FinOps platform for teams running more than one cloud — AWS, Azure and GCP alongside Alibaba, Tencent and other clouds most tools can’t reach. It connects to AWS read-only, then layers on real payable, the Resource Center, cost allocation and real-time alerts — all in one view.

Three ways to read your AWS bill — each with a catch

Console, CUR + Athena, invoice PDF — each solves a piece, and each leaves a gap.

Cost Explorer (console)

API billed per call$0.01 each — a script can rack up "$25/mo" fast
Data lagsUp to 24h, refreshed ≤3× a day
Limited granularityHourly only for ~14 days; resource-level incomplete
No real-time alertsOverspend often surfaces at month-end

CUR / Data Exports → Athena

You build the stackS3 + Glue + Athena
You write the SQLFinance and business teams can’t use it
Pay per scanAthena charges $5/TB scanned
Cryptic columnsCUR has hundreds — you reconcile them yourself

Invoice PDF / billing console

Monthly totals onlyNo drill-down to resources
Retail pricingResellers can’t see the real payable
Static billNo trends, allocation, or alerts

How Mof solves these

Connect read-only, unify AWS with your other clouds, and fill in real payable, Resource Center, allocation and alerts.

Cost Explorer won’t go deep — spend by resource means exporting CUR and writing SQL

Mof connects read-only and gives you a detailed dashboard on day one — drill down by service or resource, no SQL, no per-call or per-scan fees.

Data lags and there are no real-time alerts, so overspend shows up at month-end

Mof syncs promptly and adds budgets plus anomaly detection (Holt-Winters) — the moment you go over, it pushes to Slack, email, DingTalk, Lark or WeCom.

AWS bought through a reseller (CSP) shows retail pricing — you can’t tell what you actually pay

Mof supports custom discounts: it converts retail pricing into your real payable, laying out billed, discount, saved and payable in one line.

CUR has hundreds of cryptic columns — building a consistent cost view is painful

Mof normalizes billing fields into one clean schema — the same across AWS and your other clouds, so you stop guessing what a line item means.

It’s AWS-only — multi-account needs Organizations, and other clouds live in separate tools

Mof brings your AWS accounts together with Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud and more — into one table to view and compare side by side.

Finding waste means bouncing between Config, CloudWatch, Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer

Mof’s Resource Center shows it in one place: inventory + utilization (P95) + real cost per resource + over-provisioned / idle / orphaned / stopped, across accounts and clouds.

Splitting shared cost is hard, and exports are raw CSV that finance still has to clean up

Mof does showback by team / project / tag, splitting shared resources by your rules — then exports the result to Excel that finance can book directly.

AWS native vs Mof

Dimension	AWS native	Mof
Data latency	Cost Explorer lags up to 24h, 3 refreshes/day	Synced, near real-time
Detail / drill-down	Resource-level incomplete; needs CUR + SQL	Detailed dashboard on connect, no SQL
Extra fees	CE API $0.01/call; Athena $5/TB	No extra charge for queries
Learning curve	Build S3+Glue+Athena, know SQL	Works out of the box, for finance & teams
Billing fields	CUR: hundreds of cryptic columns	Normalized, one schema across clouds
Real payable	Resellers see retail only	Custom discounts → real payable
Resource + usage + cost	Split across Config/CloudWatch/CE/Optimizer, AWS-only	Resource Center: inventory + P95 + payable + waste, cross-cloud
Multi-account / cloud	Needs Organizations; AWS-only	Many accounts + multi-cloud in one table
Alerts	No Slack / email / IM push	Real-time alerts to Slack, email & IM
Allocation / tags	Native Cost Allocation Tags only	Showback + virtual tags, Excel export
Anomaly detection	Separate, basic	Holt-Winters real-time alerts

AWS cost management FAQ

How is Mof different from AWS Cost Explorer and the Cost and Usage Report (CUR)?

Cost Explorer is coarse per account/Organization, lags up to 24h and bills its API per call; going deeper means exporting CUR to Athena, writing SQL and paying per TB. Mof connects read-only and gives you a detailed dashboard — no SQL, no query fees — then adds real payable (custom discounts), the Resource Center, cost allocation and alerts, and puts your other clouds in the same view.

Does Cost Explorer actually cost money?

The console is free, but the API costs $0.01 per request (doubled per source for custom billing views), and hourly-granularity data is billed too. Teams that wire up scripts or third-party tools often get a surprise "$25/mo" or more. Mof never bills you per API call.

For AWS bought through a reseller (CSP), can Mof show the real payable?

Yes. Reseller AWS bills usually show PAYG retail pricing, not what you actually pay the reseller. Mof supports custom discounts to convert retail into your real payable, and clearly shows billed, discount, saved and payable.

How does Mof connect to AWS billing data? Is it safe?

Through an IAM access key with read-only permissions (or CUR / Data Export per our docs). Mof reads billing and resources only — it needs no write access and changes nothing in your AWS account.

Which AWS services does it cover? Does it support tag-based allocation?

EC2, S3, RDS, CloudFront, EBS, Lambda and other major line items sync automatically — no per-service setup. Allocation reuses your AWS cost allocation tags and account structure, and untagged shared resources can be split by ratio or custom rules.