Every category where a model named AWS Cost Explorer for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Cloud cost management	Cloud and infrastructure	10%	3 of 76	29%	38	criticized challenger	▼−1Since September 2026: 10% → 8%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
IT financial management	IT operations and endpoint	2%	18 of 159	17%	6	under 10 labels · led by Nicus ITFM Platform at 9%

Movement

Since September 2026, AWS Cost Explorer held within the floor in all two categories: no change cleared 11 points.

Best category · FinOps · by segment

Small business▼−9Since September 2026: 19% → 10%, −9 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

10%from 19% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 2 pointsRank 2 of 78, unchanged

Mid-market▼−1Since September 2026: 10% → 8%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

8%from 10% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 3 of 70, unchanged

Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

0%from 0% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 50 → 70 of 71

All categories · Mid-market

Category	September 2026	Now	Change	Reading	Rank
IT financial mgmt	0%	2%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.	New this edition	Rank 18 of 159, unchanged
FinOps	10%	8%	▼−1Since September 2026: 10% → 8%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 3 of 76, unchanged

Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.

The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions

By model

How each model treated AWS Cost Explorer across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

ShowHide

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	1	2	4
GPT-5.4 mini	2	0	0	0	2
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	1	1	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	1	0	2
Grok 4.20	2	0	0	3	5
Mistral Small	0	0	2	1	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	3	1	1	6
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	1	1	1	4
Kimi K2	0	4	1	0	5
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	2	0	1	3
MiniMax M2.5	0	2	2	1	5
GPT-6 Luna	1	0	0	0	1
Muse Glimmer 30B	1	0	0	1	2

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct15 labels1

Paraphrase10 labels2

Comparative26 labels3not counted in share

Budget-constrained28 labels12

Scale-constrained12 labelsNone

Negative35 labels13not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative126 labels in all, every segment counted; 15 of the 31 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Best for a limited budget: start with your cloud provider's built-in cost tools... AWS Cost Explorer, Microsoft Cost Management, or Google Cloud Cost Management.” GPT-6 Luna · FinOps · budget prompt · first choice

“Native cloud provider tools are free or nearly free... Zero spend / < $2.5K/mo cloud bill: Native Cost Explorer + Infracost for prevention, plus Vantage Starter” Muse Glimmer 30B · FinOps · budget prompt · first choice

“If you have < $1,000/month in cloud spend: Stick to Native Tools (AWS/Azure/GCP). Do not pay for a third-party tool yet.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · FinOps · budget prompt · first choice

“AWS: AWS Cost Explorer + AWS Budgets ... Single cloud, limited budget: use the native tool from your cloud provider.” GPT-5.4 mini · FinOps · budget prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Approaches to Avoid ... native cloud tools (AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, Google Cloud FinOps) ... they often carry hidden fees, delayed data, multi-cloud limits and complex interfaces” Claude Haiku 4.5 · IT financial mgmt · negative prompt · hard negative

“work well for single-cloud environments at small scale but require perfect tagging discipline and lack multi-cloud or Kubernetes cluster visibility” Muse Glimmer 30B · FinOps · negative prompt · soft negative

“independent reviews highlight significant data lag (up to 24 hours) in usage reporting and shallow drill-down capabilities” Mistral Small · FinOps · negative prompt · soft negative

“Use them to start, but avoid relying on them if you run multi-cloud or container-heavy infrastructures.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · FinOps · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as AWS Cost Explorer, over the 124 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and AWS Cost Explorer was named but was not.

ShowHide

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Microsoft Cost Management89 of 1240Compare →

Vantage75 of 12436Compare →

IBM Apptio Cloudability64 of 1249Not among the top eight

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth57 of 1245Not among the top eight

CloudZero56 of 1247Compare →

Google Cloud Billing44 of 1240Not among the top eight

Kubecost42 of 1241Compare →

Flexera One40 of 1245Not among the top eight

Google Cloud Cost Management24 of 1241Not among the top eight

Harness Cloud Cost Management23 of 1241Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named AWS Cost Explorer. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 113 of the 124 answers that named AWS Cost Explorer and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cloudaware.com66

cloudzero.com64

g2.com45

amnic.com43

nops.io40

finout.io37

openmetal.io33

spendark.com25

vantage.sh25

digitalocean.com24

402 of the 402 domain citations in answers naming AWS Cost Explorer came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cloudaware.com/blog/cloud-cost-management-tools43

cloudzero.com/blog/cloud-cost-management-tools43

openmetal.io/resources/blog/which-cloud-cost-management-tool-is-best-for-your-company33

nops.io/blog/cloud-cost-management-software-tools31

finout.io/blog/best-cloud-cost-management-tools-for-continuous-improvement28

cloudaware.com/blog/cloud-cost-optimization-tools26

amnic.com/blogs/cloud-cost-management-tools24

digitalocean.com/resources/articles/cloud-cost-management-tools24

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where AWS Cost Explorer stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

ShowHide

In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 2,400 a month (“aws cost explorer”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 87 a month
Its own site: It sits on AWS's site (aws.amazon.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

10%

rank 3 of 76 in finops

Segment leader

45%

Vantage

First choices: 15 across its categories
Named in: 124 answers
Its own site cited: in 113 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as AWS Cost Explorer

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as AWS Cost Explorer; a claim can dispute any of them.

AWS Cost Explorer + AWS Budgets 2AWS Cost Explorer & AWS Budgets 1AWS Cost Explorer & Budgets 1AWS Cost Explorer & Compute Optimizer 1AWS Cost Explorer / AWS Budgets / AWS Compute Optimizer 1AWS Cost Explorer / Budgets 1

Follow AWS Cost Explorer

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

AWS is the company behind AWS Cost Explorer.

ShowHide

On record

Company records

Also from AWS: AWS ACM, AWS ACM Private CA, AWS ALB, AWS ALB/ELB, AWS ALB/NLB, AWS API Gateway HTTP APIs, AWS Amazon Aurora, AWS App Runner and 87 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: Visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time
aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer
For: null
aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer
Price stated: The AWS Cost Explorer API incurs a charge of 0.01 per request. aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/faqs
Starting price: 0.00000033 aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/pricing
Free plan or trial: Get started for free aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/pricing
Not stated on the pages read: Integrations, certifications, hosting, customers

What AWS Cost Explorer's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer, aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/sla, aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/faqs, aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/pricing, aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/features. A claimed page can correct any of them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when AWS Cost Explorer's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as AWS Cost Explorer, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for AWS Cost Explorer by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where AWS Cost Explorer is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name AWS Cost Explorer, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

Badges

Wins only: a badge exists where AWS Cost Explorer is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.

ShowHide

AWS Cost Explorer is among the products AI models recommend first in Cloud cost management this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.

Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/cloud-cost-management/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/aws-cost-explorer--cloud-cost-management-wide.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Cloud cost management, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="320" height="104"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Cloud cost management standing, where the claim can be checked.

Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/cloud-cost-management/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/aws-cost-explorer--cloud-cost-management-square.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Cloud cost management, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="240" height="240"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Cloud cost management standing, where the claim can be checked.

Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/cloud-cost-management/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/aws-cost-explorer--cloud-cost-management-compact.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Cloud cost management, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="200" height="56"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Cloud cost management standing, where the claim can be checked.

Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.