Question: What do I do if I receive a bill from AWS but can't find the resources related to the charges?

I’m receiving a monthly bill from AWS, but I can’t find the resources that are generating the charges.

Short descriptionThe resources that generate charges might not be visible to you due to the following reasons:You have active resources in your account that you are not aware of.The charges are being generated by resources on another account.You might not have permissions to view the resources that are generating charges.The resources generated charges earlier in the month but have since been terminated or deleted.

ResolutionYou have active resources in your account that you are not aware ofTo check the resources that are generating charges in your account, do the following:Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.In the navigation pane, on the left side of the screen, choose Bills.The Details section shows all the charges that are being incurred by various AWS services on your account. If you see charges for a service, then that service is generating charges.If you use the consolidated billing feature in AWS Organizations, then the Bills page lists totals for all accounts on the Consolidated Bill Details tab. Choose the Bill Details by Account tab to see the activity for each account in the organization.Note: It’s a best practice to check the Details section for the previous month to identify all services that are generating charges.Under Details, expand each service to identify the Regions where the services have incurred charges.Note: The Billing and Cost Management console takes about 24 hours to update usage and charge information for active resources.You can use the AWSSupport-ListEC2Resources AWS Systems Manager Automation document to list your active Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) resources. This automation document returns information on Amazon EC2 instances and related resources, such as Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes, Elastic IP addresses, and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups from the AWS Regions that you specify. By default, the information is gathered from all Regions and displayed in the output. To run this automation, follow the instructions in Running a simple automation.In addition, you can use the AWS Cost and Usage Report or the AWS Cost Explorer to check your usage of resources.After identifying your active resources in different Regions, terminate resources that you no longer need by opening the respective service console. For more information, see Why was I charged by Amazon Web Services when I don't have an AWS account?The charges are being generated by resources on another accountCheck any other AWS accounts that you might have. You can run the AWSSupport-ListEC2Resources automation on your other AWS accounts to check if there are active EC2 resources in these accounts.For information on how to find an account associated with AWS charges, see Why was I charged by Amazon Web Services when I don't have an AWS account?You might not have permissions to view the resources that are generating chargesIf you sign in to an AWS account as an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user, you might not have permission to view the resources that are generating charges. Ask your account administrator to grant you permissions to view those resources. For a general explanation of IAM permissions and policies, see Overview of access management: Permissions and policies.If you're signed in to a member account in an organization, then the charges might be related to resources on another account in the organization's consolidated bill. Ask the owner of that account for more information about the resources on the account.The resources generated charges earlier in the month, but have since been terminated or deletedThe charges in the Billing and Cost Management console represent your total usage for a given month. If the resources generated charges earlier in the month, but are later stopped or terminated, they are no longer visible in the AWS Management Console for that service.You can check the AWS Cost and Usage report or AWS Cost Explorer to be sure that the resources are no longer generating charges.

Related informationViewing your monthly chargesWhat are AWS Cost and Usage Reports?Analyzing your costs with Cost ExplorerHow do I use the AWS Cost and Usage Report?AWS pricing