How many months of data do I need?

At minimum, 2 billing periods in the file. BillSpike compares your two most recent periods to identify what changed.

Is my raw billing file stored?

No. Your file is uploaded directly to S3 via presigned URL, processed, then permanently deleted. Only the analysis findings are retained. BillSpike never stores your raw billing data.

What is the difference between vol and price in the results?

vol means you used more of the service — your usage volume increased. price means the effective unit cost went up, often because a Reserved Instance or Savings Plan expired and the workload fell back to on-demand rates.

Does BillSpike need IAM access to my AWS account?

No. BillSpike only needs the exported CUR or FOCUS file. You export it from your cloud console and upload it. No credentials, no IAM roles, no cloud account access required.

What file formats does BillSpike support?

AWS CUR 1.0 and 2.0 (CSV and Parquet), FOCUS 1.x exports from AWS, Azure, and GCP, gzipped CSV (.csv.gz), and Parquet (.parquet, .snappy.parquet). Format and cloud provider are auto-detected on upload.

2026-04-09 · AWS Cost

How to Download Your AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR and FOCUS)

AWS does not give you a download button for your billing data. You set up a report, it lands in an S3 bucket, and you pull it from there. The process is straightforward once you have done it, but the first time it is not obvious, partly because AWS has two separate places to configure billing exports and the naming is confusing.

Which format to use

There are three formats to know about.

Legacy CUR (1.0) has been around since 2015. Mixed-case column names like lineItem/UnblendedCost, verbose, but the most widely supported format and the one with the most detail. If you already have it set up and your tooling works with it, leave it alone.

CUR 2.0 is the newer version, available through AWS Data Exports (a different section of the console). Snake_case column names, cleaner schema, aligns with FOCUS. If you are setting this up for the first time and only care about AWS, use CUR 2.0.

FOCUS 1.x is the open standard from the FinOps Foundation. Also available through Data Exports. Use it if you want a consistent schema across AWS, Azure, and GCP, or if your analysis tool specifically supports it.

Setting up CUR 1.0

Go to the AWS console, search for Billing and Cost Management, and select Cost and Usage Reports from the left sidebar. Click Create report, give it a name, and check Include resource IDs if you want per-resource breakdown.

Set an S3 bucket as the destination. You can use an existing bucket or let AWS create one. Set a path prefix like cur/ so the files land somewhere predictable. Monthly granularity works for most cases. Set compression to GZIP or Parquet.

AWS delivers the first report within 24 hours and updates it once per day after that.

Setting up CUR 2.0 or FOCUS

This is where it gets confusing. Data Exports is a completely separate section from Cost and Usage Reports, even though it does the same thing. AWS effectively built a new product and left the old one running. Go to Billing and Cost Management and look for Data Exports in the sidebar, not Cost and Usage Reports.

Click Create export. Select Standard data export for CUR 2.0. If you want FOCUS format, select Standard data export and then choose FOCUS 1.0 as the data format on the next screen. Set your S3 destination and create it. Same 24-hour wait for the first delivery.

If you set up a report in the old CUR section, it will not appear in Data Exports. They do not talk to each other.

Downloading the file

Once the report has been delivered, navigate to the S3 bucket you specified. The path follows the prefix you set, typically something like cur/REPORT_NAME/REPORT_NAME/year=2026/month=04/.

Small accounts get a single file. Larger accounts get multiple part files. You can download through the S3 console or via the CLI:

``aws s3 cp s3://your-bucket/cur/report-name/report-name/year=2026/month=04/ . --recursive``

GZIP files have a .csv.gz extension. Most tools handle them directly without decompressing.

Things that catch people out

AWS does not backfill. You create the report today and get data from today forward. There is no historical data in the first delivery. If you need last month's data, you have to wait until the next billing cycle or find it in Cost Explorer instead.

If you used an existing S3 bucket and the report is not appearing, check the bucket policy. AWS needs permission to write to it. The console adds the right policy automatically if you let it create the bucket. If you brought your own bucket, check for a statement allowing billingreports.amazonaws.com to s3:PutObject.

On consolidated billing accounts, CUR is only available from the management account. Member accounts cannot configure their own exports.

Using the file with BillSpike

Upload the file directly. CUR 1.0, CUR 2.0, and FOCUS exports all work. If your report generated multiple part files for a single month, use multi-file upload to combine them into one analysis. Parquet and GZIP CSV both work without any decompression on your end.

Analyze your own AWS cost spike at billspike.io