StaleSweep

Cost insights setup

StaleSweep can read your AWS Cost & Usage Report (CUR) to show real spend — a bill breakdown by service, region, and account, cost-anomaly alerts, and the actual cost of each unused resource it finds.

Unlike tools that poll the Cost Explorer API (which AWS bills at $0.01 per request), StaleSweep reads the CUR delivered to S3 — so the ongoing AWS cost to you is effectively zero (a few cents of S3 storage). Cost data stays in your account; StaleSweep reads it with the same read-only scan role you already connected, and stores only daily aggregates.

Tip: Cost insights is a Business-plan feature. During the free-launch period every account has it. Enabling it requires an admin role. CUR data lives at the AWS Organization management (payer) account, so enable it on that connection.
Tip: Cost insights is the same connection stack with one extra parameter turned on (EnableCostReports=true), deployed in us-east-1 — the only region AWS allows the CUR export. The scan role is global IAM, so a us-east-1 stack still scans every region; one stack creates the role and the CUR export together.

Deploy the stack in us-east-1 (recommended: auto bucket)

The Deploy cost insights button on the Spend page opens CloudFormation pinned to us-east-1 with cost reports pre-enabled. It provisions an S3 bucket and a CUR 2.0 export, and grants the scan role read access — one deploy.

  1. On the Spend page, click Deploy cost insights (us-east-1). It opens the connection stack with EnableCostReports=true and the region prefilled.
  2. Leave CostReportsBucket as prefilled (a unique stalesweep-<random> name we propose for you) so the stack creates a dedicated bucket and delivers the CUR there.
  3. Create the stack. That's it — role, bucket, and export in one go.
Warning: If you already connected AWS in a different region, deploy this us-east-1 stack fresh (the role is global IAM, so it re-creates cleanly and your connection details don't change).

Bring your own bucket (optional)

Set CostReportsBucket to a bucket you own and the stack delivers the CUR there instead — it still creates the export and attaches a delivery policy to that bucket. The bucket must already exist, and its policy is replaced, so use one dedicated to this CUR.

What to expect after enabling

  • AWS can take up to 24 hours to deliver the first CUR. The Spendpage shows a “waiting for your first report” state until it lands, then fills in automatically.
  • Once data arrives, Spend shows your month-to-date total — compared against the same period last month, not a rolling 30-day window — plus a breakdown you can group by service / region / account / usage type, and a banner for any detected cost spikes.
  • Each unused-resource finding then shows what that specific resource actually cost — so you can prioritize cleanup by real dollars, not estimates.
  • The Dashboard's savings card also shows your estimated waste as a share of that month's bill, projected to a full-month estimate from your pace so far — a sense of scale for how much of what you're paying AWS is avoidable.
Warning: The CUR is delivered a day or two in arrears and AWS keeps finalizing a month for a few days after it ends, so the most recent day or two of spend may still be settling.