AWS Cost Explorer is the console tool most finance and platform teams already use to inspect AWS spend over time. Because Claude Platform on AWS bills through AWS Marketplace — metered hourly in Claude Consumption Units (CCUs, $0.01 each) and invoiced monthly in arrears — its charges show up in the same tooling. But there is a division of labor to understand up front: Cost Explorer answers "how much and when"; the Claude Console answers "which workspace, which model, which tokens."
Finding the charge
In Cost Explorer, Claude Platform usage appears among your AWS Marketplace charges rather than alongside native services like EC2 or S3. To isolate it, filter by the Marketplace charge dimensions — in the Cost Explorer filter panel, look under the billing categories that separate Marketplace software charges from AWS service charges, and select the Claude Platform on AWS product entry. The exact filter labels evolve with the Billing console UI, so verify the current names in AWS's official Cost Explorer documentation rather than hard-coding them into a runbook.
Once filtered, the standard Cost Explorer features behave normally: daily or monthly granularity, grouping by linked account, and saved reports. If different teams call Claude from different AWS accounts, grouping by linked account is your cleanest cost split on the AWS side — an account boundary is a billing boundary.
Grouping by team: tags vs. workspaces
Cost Explorer can group by cost allocation tags you have activated, which works well for the compute that calls Claude. The model spend itself, however, is consolidated into the Marketplace meter, so per-team model costs come from the platform's native attribution unit: the workspace. Usage, quotas, and cost roll up per workspace, and the Claude Console's Usage and Cost pages (reached via the "Open Claude Console" flow from the AWS Console) break consumption down accordingly. The practical pairing:
| Question | Tool |
|---|---|
| Total Claude spend this month vs. last | Cost Explorer (Marketplace filter) |
| Spend by AWS account | Cost Explorer, group by linked account |
| Spend by team / product / cost center | Claude Console per-workspace views |
| Token-level usage by model | Claude Console Usage page |
| Alert when spend crosses a threshold | AWS Budgets |
See cost allocation for Claude Platform on AWS for how to structure workspaces so this breakdown matches your chargeback model.
Budget alerts: your only spend brake
This step matters more here than on most platforms, because Anthropic's Console spend limits are not available on Claude Platform on AWS — the documentation directs you to AWS billing controls instead. There is no Anthropic-side setting that pauses usage at a dollar cap, so create an AWS Budgets budget scoped to your Claude Platform Marketplace charges, with alert thresholds at, say, 50%, 80%, and 100% of the monthly figure you expect. Remember that budgets alert (or trigger actions you configure); they do not automatically stop API traffic — pair them with rate limits, which Anthropic manages per organization, as the throughput-side control. New organizations start on the Start tier and don't move up automatically; contact Anthropic to raise limits.
Exporting for chargebacks
For chargeback pipelines, note one documented gap: the programmatic Usage and Cost API that exists on the first-party Claude API is not available on Claude Platform on AWS — it is among the Admin API endpoints excluded from the platform's otherwise same-day parity. Your export path is therefore AWS-side billing data (Cost Explorer reports and your standard billing exports) for the dollar totals, combined with per-workspace figures from the Claude Console for the attribution split. Reconcile the two monthly: the sum of workspace-level costs should track the Marketplace line item, with metering-timing differences at month boundaries as the usual explanation for small gaps.
Where to go next
Start with how Claude Platform billing works if the CCU model is new, then see quota management for the rate-limit side of controlling consumption.