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Service Breakdown

The Service Breakdown view dissects your AWS spending by individual service, helping you understand which services consume the most budget and how their costs are trending over time.

Accessing Service Breakdown​

From the Cost Dashboard, click on the Top Services card, or navigate to the Service Breakdown tab within the Cost Analysis page.

What You See​

Service Cost Table​

The primary view is a ranked table of all AWS services with associated costs:

ColumnDescription
ServiceAWS service name (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda)
Current Period CostTotal spend for the selected time period
Previous Period CostSpend for the equivalent previous period (for comparison)
ChangePercentage change between periods (positive = increase, negative = decrease)
% of TotalThis service's share of your total AWS spend
TrendVisual trend indicator showing the spending direction

The table is sorted by cost (highest first) by default. Click any column header to re-sort.

Service Cost Chart​

A bar or pie chart visualisation accompanies the table, showing the relative proportion of spending across your top services. This makes it immediately clear which services dominate your bill.

tip

In most AWS environments, the top 5 services account for 70-80% of total spending. Focus your optimisation efforts on these high-impact services first.

Service Trend Charts​

Click on any service row to expand a detailed trend view showing:

  • Daily cost for the selected period
  • Trend line indicating the direction of spending
  • Any anomalies detected for that specific service

Understanding Service Costs​

Compute Services​

Compute services (EC2, ECS, Lambda, Fargate) are typically the largest cost category. Key factors that drive compute costs:

  • Instance types and sizes -- Are you running larger instances than needed?
  • Running hours -- Are non-production instances running 24/7?
  • Scaling patterns -- Are auto-scaling policies configured appropriately?

For EC2-specific optimisation, see Rightsizing.

Storage Services​

Storage costs (S3, EBS, EFS) tend to grow steadily over time. Watch for:

  • Unattached EBS volumes -- Volumes not attached to any instance still incur charges.
  • S3 storage class -- Data that is rarely accessed should use S3 Infrequent Access or Glacier.
  • Snapshot accumulation -- Old EBS and RDS snapshots can quietly add up.

For storage-specific findings, see Waste Detection.

Database Services​

Database costs (RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift) often include hidden costs:

  • Multi-AZ deployments -- Doubles the instance cost for high availability.
  • Provisioned IOPS -- Can be significantly more expensive than General Purpose storage.
  • Read replicas -- Each replica is billed separately.

Data Transfer​

Data transfer costs are frequently overlooked but can be substantial:

  • Cross-region transfer -- Data moving between AWS regions incurs per-GB charges.
  • Internet egress -- Data leaving AWS to the internet is charged.
  • NAT Gateway processing -- Per-GB charges for traffic through NAT Gateways can add up quickly.
info

NAT Gateway data processing charges are one of the most commonly overlooked cost items. A single NAT Gateway processing 1 TB/month of traffic costs approximately $45 in processing fees alone, on top of the hourly charge.

Filtering and Sorting​

By Time Period​

The service breakdown respects the time period selected on the Cost Dashboard. Change the time period to see how service costs vary over different windows.

By Account​

When viewing multiple accounts, the breakdown shows aggregate spending. Use the account selector to drill down into a specific account's service costs.

By Cost Category​

Filter services by category to focus on specific areas:

  • Compute -- EC2, Lambda, ECS, Fargate, Batch
  • Storage -- S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier
  • Database -- RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift
  • Networking -- VPC, CloudFront, Route 53, Direct Connect
  • Management -- CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config, Systems Manager
  • Security -- WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, Inspector

Identifying Optimisation Opportunities​

The Service Breakdown is your starting point for identifying where to focus optimisation efforts:

Rapid Growth Services​

Services with a high positive change percentage may indicate:

  • Legitimate growth in usage (new workloads, increased traffic)
  • Misconfigured resources (auto-scaling without upper limits)
  • Unintended usage (test resources left running, data transfer loops)

Stable but Expensive Services​

Services with consistent high costs are candidates for commitment-based discounts:

New Services​

Services that appear for the first time in your bill may warrant investigation. Guardian Pro's Anomaly Detection automatically flags new services.

Cross-Referencing with Security Findings​

Cost data is enriched with findings from Guardian Pro's security scanner. When a service has associated findings -- such as an underutilised EC2 instance or an unattached EBS volume -- the Service Breakdown indicates this with a link to the relevant finding in the Action Centre.

This integration ensures that cost optimisation and security hardening work together rather than in isolation.

Next Steps​

  • Region Analysis -- Break down costs by geographic region
  • Rightsizing -- Get specific recommendations for compute and database resources
  • Waste Detection -- Find idle and unused resources contributing to service costs