For those who don’t know the latest attachment discovered you can find more information in these very good articles:

Update: AWS updates the pricing after it: Amazon S3 will no longer charge for several HTTP error codes

Requirements

Your account on AWS needs at least the privileges to access to:

  • AWS Billings
  • AWS CloudWatch
  • AWS SNS

Tools installed (Optional, needed only for the short version):

Short Version

You need to create a SNS Topic and get the ARN using this command below:

export SNS_TOPICARN=$(aws sns create-topic --name "billing-topic" \
    --region "us-east-1"|jq -r ".TopicArn")

Now, create an email subscriber for that topic, which can be a mailing list or a single address. Repeat this command for each destination email.

Replace [email protected] with your target email:

aws sns subscribe --topic-arn "${SNS_TOPICARN}" --protocol "email" \
    --notification-endpoint "[email protected]" --no-cli-pager --region "us-east-1"

Checkout in your target email and click on the confirmation link received.

Now, create the alarm, in this command below we set the alarm to the 10$ daily based on threshold.

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm --alarm-name "Billing_TooHigh" \
    --alarm-description "The expected bill is too high" --metric-name "EstimatedCharges" \
    --namespace "AWS/Billing" --statistic "Maximum" --period 21600 --evaluation-periods 4 \
    --threshold 10.0 --comparison-operator "GreaterThanThreshold"  --region "us-east-1" \
    --alarm-actions "${SNS_TOPICARN}"

Long Story

First of all, we need to jump over the region Nord Virginia (us-east-1). The billing metric is available only there.

Click on the right corner and select the region.

Region US-East-1

You need to create an SNS topic, that can be configured as multiple channels like:

  • SMS.
  • E-Mail.
  • Android/IoS Notification.
  • HTTP/S POST Requests.
  • Amazon Data Firehose.
  • Amazon SQS.
  • AWS Lambda.

More details here: Subscribing to an Amazon SNS topic

In our example, we use the email as a protocol subscriber.

Create SNS Topic

Search on the left corner SNS and select the service Simple Notification Service

SNS Service

On the right corner click on Create Topic

Create Topic button

OK, now configure like this screenshot below and click on the next

Type: Standard

Name: billing-topic (or whatever you want)

Display Name: Billing Topic

SNS Configuration

Now you need to create a subscriber (to simplify you could see it as client).

On the left click on Subscription and then on the right corner click on Create Subscription

Create subscriber

Use this configuration below:

Topic ARN: Select the billing-topic Topic

Protocol: Email

Endpoint: Insert your target email, which can be a Mailing list or a specific email.

Click on Create Subscription

Create subscriber config

Create a Billing Alarm

Search on the left corner CloudWatch and select the service CloudWatch

Select cloudwatch on menu

Select Alarm -> Billing on the left side.

If you don’t see it checkout the Region, you need to stay in Nord Virginia (us-east-1)

Select alarm on billing

On the right corner, you need to click on the Create Alarm button.

Click on Create Alarm Button

Click on Select Metric

Click on select metric

On the left dropdown select N.Virginia and click on the Billing section.

Select billing section

Select Total Estimated Charge section

Select Total Estimated Charge section

Select Estimated Changed and then Select Metric

Select Estimated Charged metric

Select the option below:

  • Statistic: Maximum
  • Period: 6 Hour
  • Threshold: Static
  • Alarm Condition: Greater
  • Threshold: 10 USD (or whatever you want)

And then Next

Select Threshould settings

Select the alarm condition, more specifically:

  • Alarm Trigger: In Alarm
  • Send Notification to the Following SNS Topic: Select Existing SNS Topic
  • Send a Notification to select Billing Topic and then Next
Select Threshould settings

Insert a name and a description and then Next

Select Threshould settings

And finally, click on Create Alarm.