What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
To visualize AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) data with Amazon Athena, deliver an Athena-compatible Parquet report to Amazon S3, expose it through the AWS Glue Data Catalog, aggregate it with SQL, and connect the resulting table or views to Amazon QuickSight. Athena queries the files in S3 directly, so you do not need a customer-managed data warehouse.
What the Athena–CUR–QuickSight setup does
AWS CUR is the most detailed AWS billing dataset available to an account. Athena supplies serverless SQL over the report files in S3; QuickSight turns the query results into interactive charts and dashboards. The cleanest architecture separates the jobs:
- CUR and S3: collect and store billing and usage records.
- Glue Data Catalog: describes the CUR files as a table that Athena can query.
- Athena: aggregates costs, usage and dimensions, and stores reusable views.
- QuickSight: presents trends, mixes, details and filters for business users.
If you want an AWS-provided, largely prebuilt cost-analytics experience instead of designing dashboards, evaluate Cloud Intelligence Dashboards (also known as CUDOS). It reduces dashboard-design work but uses a predefined model and experience.
Prepare a CUR that Athena can query
1. Use a dedicated S3 location
Create or select a dedicated S3 bucket for the report and its query data. AWS recommends creating a new bucket and report for the Athena workflow. Keep the CUR data location, Athena query-results location and their permissions documented; QuickSight will need access to the relevant locations.
#1 Best Overall
- Easily store and access 2TB to content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive
- Designed to work with Windows or Mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop
- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
2. Choose Parquet and the required granularity
Configure the Cost and Usage Report or Data Export for Parquet output and Athena integration. The Athena integration partitions the data by year and month. Select resource IDs if you need resource-level analysis; omitting them prevents that level of attribution later. Parquet’s columnar format and partitioning let queries read less data when SQL selects only needed columns and limits partitions.
3. Create the catalog table
Deploy the AWS-provided CloudFormation integration, or configure the Glue crawler and catalog manually. After deployment, open Athena and verify that the CUR database and table are visible. If the table is missing, check the S3 path, crawler or stack status, and the permissions used to read the bucket.
Rank #2
- Easily store and access 5TB of content on the go with the Seagate portable drive, a USB external hard Drive
- Designed to work with Windows or Mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop
- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
Query CUR data in Athena
Use the catalog table created for your report. Replace cur_table below with its actual name. Partition filtering is important: include the year (and, where appropriate, month) partition in recurring queries.
Monthly cost by AWS service
SELECT
year,
month,
line_item_product_code AS service,
SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE year = '2026'
GROUP BY year, month, line_item_product_code
ORDER BY year, month, unblended_cost DESC;This produces a time-series-ready result. Use the report’s actual partition data type and values if your catalog represents year or month differently.
Rank #3
- Easily store and access 1TB to content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive.Specific uses: Personal
- Designed to work with Windows or Mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop. Reformatting may be required for Mac
- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
Cost by linked account
SELECT
year,
month,
line_item_usage_account_id AS account_id,
SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE year = '2026'
GROUP BY year, month, line_item_usage_account_id
ORDER BY year, month, unblended_cost DESC;Account identifier column names can vary with the CUR schema and export version. Confirm the available columns in Athena before saving the query.
Cost by region
SELECT
year,
month,
product_region AS region,
SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE year = '2026'
GROUP BY year, month, product_region
ORDER BY year, month, unblended_cost DESC;Cost by usage type
SELECT
year,
month,
line_item_usage_type AS usage_type,
SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE year = '2026'
GROUP BY year, month, line_item_usage_type
ORDER BY year, month, unblended_cost DESC;Inspect resource-level records
SELECT
line_item_resource_id AS resource_id,
line_item_product_code AS service,
year,
month,
line_item_unblended_cost AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
WHERE year = '2026'
AND line_item_resource_id IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY unblended_cost DESC
LIMIT 100;Resource IDs are available for analysis only when they were included when the report was configured. A resource-detail query can return many rows, so use a limit and partition filters while exploring.
Rank #4
- Easily store and access 4TB of content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive.Specific uses: Personal
- Designed to work with Windows or Mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop
- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
Create stable Athena views for dashboards
Save recurring business definitions as views rather than embedding raw CUR SQL in every visual. A view can standardize dimensions such as service, account, region and usage type, or encode a specific definition such as data-transfer cost. This gives dashboard authors a stable semantic layer while the underlying report continues to receive new partitions.
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW monthly_service_cost AS
SELECT
year,
month,
line_item_product_code AS service,
SUM(line_item_unblended_cost) AS unblended_cost
FROM cur_table
GROUP BY year, month, line_item_product_code;Validate the view against your organization’s billing definitions before using it for financial decisions. CUR contains multiple line-item types and billing attributes; a simple unblended-cost sum is useful for exploration but is not automatically the same as every accounting or chargeback definition.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Best Value
- [Upgraded Version] - This external hard drive features a mirrored logo stripe combined with a striped anti-slip design, and the rounded corners of the casing make it easier to grip. The stripes also have a heat dissipation function, ensuring stable and fast data transfer.
- 【Ultra-thin and quiet】 - The motherboard adopts JMicron 578 noise-free solution, giving you a quiet working environment. Lightweight and portable size designed to fit in your pocket for easy portability.
- 【Ultra-Fast Data Transfers】 - Pairing this external hard drive with JMicron 578 solution USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 interfaces enables blazing-fast data transfer. It boasts theoretical read speeds of up to 125MB/s and write speeds of up to 103MB/s.
- 【Plug and Play】 - With no software to install, just plug it in and the drive is ready to use.The hard disk chip is wrapped with an aluminum anti-interference layer to increase heat dissipation and protect data.
- 【What You Get】 - 1 x Portable Hard Drive, 1 x USB 3.0 Cable, 1 x User Manual, Gift-type shell packaging ,Three-year manufacturer's warranty and free technical support services.
Connect Athena or the CUR manifest to QuickSight
- Grant access: In QuickSight, authorize access to Athena and to the S3 bucket containing the CUR data. Also authorize the S3 location used for Athena query results. Missing either S3 permission can prevent dataset creation or refresh.
- Create a dataset: Choose Athena as the data source, select the workgroup, database and CUR table or one of your Athena views, then choose the appropriate import or direct-query option available in your account.
- Use the manifest when appropriate: QuickSight can also ingest the CUR through its manifest. Follow the manifest’s S3 location and grant QuickSight access to that bucket.
- Choose “Visualize”: After the dataset is created, open it in QuickSight and build analyses. Confirm that date, numeric and identifier fields have the intended data types before adding visuals.
- Control refresh and scope: Apply account, region, service, tag or usage-type filters, and set refresh behavior according to your reporting needs. Actual refresh latency and available features depend on account, region and QuickSight configuration.
Choose visuals that answer a cost question
| Question | Useful visual | Fields to place in it |
|---|---|---|
| Is total spend rising or falling? | Time-series line | Year/month on the axis; summed unblended cost as the measure |
| Which services or accounts drive the total? | Stacked bar | Month on the axis; service or account as the series; cost as the value |
| Which individual resources need investigation? | Detail table | Resource ID, service, region, usage type and cost |
| Can a manager explore a subset? | Dashboard filters | Account, region, product, tag and usage type, where those fields exist in the report |
These are practical design choices, not an AWS-mandated chart set. Match the visual to the decision and keep definitions consistent across every sheet.
Keep query cost and maintenance under control
- Filter partitions: Restrict year and month whenever possible so Athena does not inspect unnecessary files.
- Select only needed columns: Parquet is columnar, so avoiding
SELECT *reduces data scanned. - Prefer views for repeated logic: A shared view prevents subtly different service, account or transfer-cost calculations across dashboards.
- Monitor schema changes: Confirm that new report columns and partitions appear in Glue and remain compatible with saved views.
- Separate exploration from presentation: Use ad-hoc Athena queries to investigate anomalies, then publish a tested view for a recurring QuickSight dashboard.
AWS described Parquet and column-based compression in a 2019 blog as reducing per-query costs by “30% to 90%” in context. That is an estimate for the workloads discussed there, not a guaranteed saving for every CUR query.
Which approach fits your need?
| Approach | SQL flexibility | Setup effort | Dashboard readiness | Governance and maintenance | Granularity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athena alone | High for ad-hoc and custom analysis | Lower if charts are not required | Limited presentation layer | IAM, Glue and query governance remain your responsibility | Can reach resource-level detail when resource IDs are present |
| Athena plus QuickSight | High through SQL and views | Moderate: add datasets, permissions and dashboard design | Interactive charts, filters and dashboards | Requires coordinated Athena, S3 and QuickSight permissions and ongoing view maintenance | Reflects the CUR fields and granularity you expose |
| Cloud Intelligence Dashboards/CUDOS | Constrained by the supplied model | Lower dashboard-design effort | Prebuilt AWS cost-analytics experience | Less custom modeling, but adoption depends on the provided definitions and deployment requirements | Determined by the dashboard model and source data |
Choose Athena when the main need is flexible investigation or resource-level analysis. Add QuickSight when people need an interactive presentation layer. Consider CUDOS when a predefined AWS experience is more valuable than a bespoke semantic model.
Troubleshoot common failures
The CUR table does not appear in Athena
- Confirm the report delivered Parquet files to the expected S3 prefix.
- Check that the CloudFormation integration or Glue crawler completed successfully.
- Verify that the Athena user or role can read the catalog and the CUR bucket.
QuickSight cannot create or refresh the dataset
- Authorize QuickSight for Athena.
- Authorize the CUR S3 bucket and the Athena query-results S3 location.
- Check workgroup, database and table selection, then retry with a small partition-filtered query.
Results are expensive or slow
- Add year/month partition predicates.
- Project only the columns needed for the visual.
- Aggregate in an Athena view before connecting QuickSight.
Resource analysis is empty
Verify that resource IDs were selected in the CUR configuration. They cannot be reconstructed for historical records that were delivered without them.
Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchPC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
