Smarter Cloud Budgeting: How New AWS Budgets Features in 2025 Help You Get Closer to the Truth
Managing cloud costs on AWS can feel like trying to solve a puzzle—just when you think you’ve got the pieces in place, they shift again. Cloud budgeting has often been a challenge, with unpredictable demand, intricate pricing schemes, and the added complexity of managing AWS Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
But AWS just changed the game.
In April 2025, AWS introduced several powerful enhancements to AWS Budgets 2025—designed to give you a more precise, honest look at your actual cloud spending. Whether you’re a FinOps lead, cloud engineer, or budget-conscious business owner, these changes can help you plan smarter and act faster.
Here’s the best part—you don’t have to do this alone.. At TruCost.Cloud, we specialize in helping businesses make the most of AWS Budgets by building smarter, more reliable cost management strategies.
What’s New in AWS Budgets 2025?
Here’s what AWS added in this latest update:
- Support for Net Unblended and Net Amortized Costs
- You can now leave out specific services, accounts, or regions from your budgets—making it easier to zero in on just the costs that matter to your team.
- Granular filtering by charge type (e.g., include/exclude SP/RI fees, credits, taxes)
- New API fields using Cost Explorer-style syntax for consistency across AWS services
In simple terms, this means AWS Budgets can now mirror your real-world AWS bill, including discounts and shared costs—letting you track what you actually pay, not just what you could have paid.
Why It Matters: Real-World Use Cases
1.Tracking Actual Costs Instead of Estimates
Before this update, AWS Budgets mainly focused on “blended” or “unblended” costs—terms that don’t account for the discounts you might be earning through SPs or RIs. That often resulted in budgets that looked fine on paper… until the invoice arrived.
Now, with Net Unblended and Net Amortized metrics, AWS Budgets shows your true costs, factoring in all those valuable discounts you’ve earned.
Example: If your team purchases a 1-year Reserved Instance, you’ll now see the amortized portion of that commitment baked right into your budget instead of having to track it separately.
2.Filtering Out Shared or Irrelevant Costs
Trying to build a clean project budget but getting muddy data from support charges, security tools, or centralized logging? Now, you can exclude services or accounts that aren’t relevant.
This is huge for teams that need cost isolation—for internal chargebacks, show backs, or just plain accuracy.
Example: Filter out expenses like AWS Support (Enterprise) or AWS Shield to highlight only the costs owned by your DevOps team.
3.Region-Specific Budgeting for Compliance
Need to build regional budgets for GDPR or other compliance standards? The new filtering tools let you precisely include or exclude regions, giving you region-specific cost visibility at a granular level.
Example: Create a European compliance budget that includes eu-west-1 and eu-central-1, while excluding all non-EU AWS regions.
Getting Started: How to Use the New Features
These enhancements are already live in both the AWS Budgets console and the AWS CLI/API. You’ll just need proper IAM permissions (like ce:GetCostAndUsage, ce:GetDimensionValues).
In the Console:
- Go to AWS Budgets in the Billing Dashboard.
- Click Create Budget → Choose Customize (advanced).
- Under Budget Metric, select:
- NET_UNBLENDED_COST or
- NET_AMORTIZED_COST
- In the Filters section, use the new Exclude options.
- Set your thresholds and email notifications as usual.
CLI Examples: Automation-Ready
Want to script your budgets? AWS has upgraded its budgeting API to support the new FilterExpression and Metrics fields in JSON requests. This change aligns AWS Budgets with the more flexible and powerful filtering capabilities found in the Cost Explorer API, making it easier than ever to create precise, customized budgets that reflect your actual cloud usage.
Add a Budget for Specific Services
json
{
“NewBudget”: {
“BudgetName”: “StorageCostsBudget”,
“BudgetLimit”: {
“Amount”: “1000.0”,
“Unit”: “USD”
},
“FilterExpression”: {
“Dimensions”: {
“Key”: “SERVICE”,
“Values”: [“Amazon Simple Storage Service”, “Amazon FSx”]
}
},
“Metrics”: [“NET_UNBLENDED_COST”],
“TimeUnit”: “MONTHLY”
}
}
Exclude Shared Services from a Team Budget
json
{
“Budget”: {
“BudgetName”: “TeamBudget”,
“BudgetType”: “COST”,
“BudgetLimit”: {
“Amount”: “5000.0”,
“Unit”: “USD”
},
“FilterExpression”: {
“Not”: {
“Dimensions”: {
“Key”: “SERVICE”,
“Values”: [“AWS Shield”, “AWS Support (Enterprise)”]
}
}
},
“Metrics”: [“NET_UNBLENDED_COST”],
“TimeUnit”: “MONTHLY”
}
}
Important: You must choose either the old CostFilters syntax or the new FilterExpression fields—both cannot be used together in one request.
Best Practices for Smarter Cloud Budgeting
Ready to integrate these features into your workflow? Here’s how you can take full advantage of these new features:
1.Audit Your Current Budgets
Use the describe-budget API to inspect your current budgets and identify which ones could benefit from more accurate filters or metrics.
2.Start Small and Iterate
Create new budgets with the enhanced metrics rather than editing existing ones. Test them out with limited scope before applying them org-wide.
3.Leverage Exclusions
Use exclusions to strip out global services, shared tools, or irrelevant accounts. This provides teams with better insight into their true cloud consumption.
4.Separate Charge Types
Split out budgets by charge type—recurring subscriptions vs. usage-based services—for easier forecasting and variance analysis.
Final Thoughts: Control Through Clarity
AWS Budgets has come a long way from being just an alerting tool. With these new capabilities, it’s evolving into a robust cloud financial management platform.
You now have the tools to stop guessing and start budgeting with confidence—whether you’re tracking discounted spend, isolating project costs, or optimizing for compliance.
And if you’re ready to go further, TruCost.Cloud can support you every step of the way.
- Set up smarter AWS Budgets with custom filters, exclusions, and alerts that fit your needs.
- Automate reporting and integrate budgets with your existing workflows
- Provide ongoing FinOps insights to ensure your costs stay predictable
In a cloud world where every cent counts, these updates aren’t just nice to have—they’re essential. And with TruCost.Cloud by your side, you can unlock maximum efficiency and savings in your AWS environment.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1: What’s the difference between Net Unblended and Net Amortized Costs in AWS Budgets?
- Net Unblended Cost shows your actual AWS bill after applying discounts, credits, and fees.
- Net Amortized Cost allocates upfront or one-time expenses, such as RI or Savings Plan purchases, evenly across the duration of the commitment.
Q2: Can I exclude AWS Support or enterprise services from my budgets?
Yes. Use the new Exclude filter to remove services like AWS Shield or AWS Support from your budget calculations.
Q3: Do these features work with AWS Organizations?
Yes. You can apply these filters across linked accounts for consolidated billing views.
Q4: How are these new AWS Budgets filters different from Cost Explorer filters?
They now share the same FilterExpression syntax, ensuring consistency between both tools.
Q5: Can I automate budget creation with these new features?
Absolutely. The AWS Budgets API now offers the same flexible filters and metrics, making it easier to use within automation scripts.
Q6: How often should I review my AWS Budgets?
At minimum, once a month. But with the new filtering and exclusions, you can set up automated weekly alerts to stay ahead. TruCost.Cloud also provides weekly budget insights straight to your inbox.
Q7: Can these budgets help with compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.)?
Yes. Region-specific budgets make compliance reporting easier. For instance, you can filter to display only European regions. TruCost.Cloud helps clients design budgets tailored to compliance and governance frameworks.
Q8: What if my costs suddenly spike?
Budgets will trigger alerts when thresholds are crossed. TruCost.Cloud can integrate anomaly detection with budgets—so you don’t just see an alert, you also get context on why costs spiked.
