# Cost Explorer Cost Explorer is a tool that enables you to view and analyze your cost and usage. You can explore your usage and cost using main graph, cost and usage reports of the Cost Explorer reserved instance reports. You can view data for up to the last 13 months, forecast how much you're likely to spend for the next 3 months, and get recommendations for what reserved instances to purchase. You can use Cost Explorer to identify areas that need further inquiry and see trends that you can use to understand your costs. After you or AWS applies tags to your AWS resources and you activate the tags in the Billing and Cost Management Console, AWS generates a cost allocation report as a CSV with your usage and costs grouped by your active tags. You can apply tags that represent business categories (such as cost centers, app names, or owners) to organize your costs across multiple services. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://notebook.iuriioapps.com/cloud/aws/monitoring/cost-explorer.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.