Explorer

Explorer is the cornerstone of nOps Inform. It helps your team move from raw billing data to actionable insight—so you can optimize costs, improve allocation, and make faster decisions. Explorer supports AWS and multi-cloud environments with flexible filters and granularity for both finance and engineering stakeholders.

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Get started

1. Sign in to nOps.
2. In the sidebar, open Inform → Explorer, or go to clara.nops.io/explorer.
3. Use the filter panel to narrow your view. Results update as you change filters.
4. Save your view as a report, or open Manage Reports to load a saved report.

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Key features

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Filters

Use the left Filters panel to shape what you see:

• Date range — presets such as 7D, 30D, MTD, and YTD, or a custom range.
• Cost type — Unblended, Amortized, Blended, List, and discounted variants (Discounted Unblended, Discounted Amortized, Discounted List).
• Usage chart — Hide, Usage, or Normalized Usage to overlay usage trends. To see a usage overlay, select exactly one Cost Unit dimension.
• Group by — dimensions organized by category:
  • Billing & Cost
  • Product & Services
  • Resource & Usage
  • Tags
  • Compute
  • Storage
  • Kubernetes

Click into any dimension to open its filter panel. From there you can:

• Include or exclude specific values.
• Use Contain or Doesn’t contain to match values by substring.
• For Tags and Cost Allocation Tags, choose a tag key and combine multiple keys with AND or OR.

The Selected Filters panel on the right lists every active filter so you can review or remove them individually, or use Clear All to reset everything at once. Some advanced key-value filters (like Labels) may show as coming soon depending on your workspace.

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Spend summary

Summary cards give you a quick read on spend:

• Yesterday’s total spend — compared to the day before.
• Month to date spend — compared to the same period last month.
• Total spend — for the selected date range, compared to the previous interval.

Granularity affects which cards appear: If your billing data hasn’t fully processed for a period yet, a card may show a “data pending” state instead of an incomplete $0 total.

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History chart and table

• Spend is shown as a bar chart; when Usage Chart is enabled, usage is overlaid as a dashed line on the same chart.
• Change Granularity to Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly.
• Use the chart’s Show 10 / 20 / 30 / 50 / all control to change how many series appear before the remainder rolls up into an Other spend series. Use the legend to search series, or enable/disable individual series.
• The Cost Explorer Table below gives a detailed breakdown by your selected dimension, with sorting, a name search, and server-side pagination.
• When you group by Tags or Cost Allocation Tags, the table shows each tag key as an expandable row so you can drill into its values.
• Use Download CSV on the table to export the current breakdown.

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Heat map

Switch from the time-series history chart to a heat map when you want to compare spend across two dimensions at once—for example, which services drive cost in which accounts, or how regions break down by environment tag.

• Click the grid icon above the chart to open the heat map. The chart area shows spend as colored cells: darker cells mean higher spend for that X/Y pair.
• Click History to return to the bar chart.
• Click Axes (while the heat map is open) to choose the X axis and Y axis dimensions. The two axes must be different.
• When you first enable the heat map, the X axis defaults to your current Group by dimension and the Y axis defaults to Account name. Change either axis anytime with Axes.
• The heat map uses your selected cost type, date range, and filters. It shows the top spend combinations (up to 50 pairs) for the period you have selected.
• Hover a cell to see the exact spend for that combination.
• Tag dimensions: you can use a specific tag key (for example, Environment) as an axis. The generic Tags category column is not available as an axis—pick a tag key instead.
• The heat map is not available while a budget overlay is active. Switch back to Default View first, then open the heat map.

Saved reports remember whether the heat map was enabled and which axes you chose. Pinned reports, Explorer Dashboard widgets, and scheduled emails use that saved view when the heat map is part of the report.

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Budget view

If your organization uses Budgets, you can overlay one directly on Explorer:

• Open View By and pick a budget from the list.
• Explorer applies that budget’s filters and adds a target line to the chart, plus a Budget Targets table below it so you can compare actual spend against your plan without leaving Explorer.
• Switch back to Default View at any time to remove the overlay.

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Saved reports

From Explorer you can:

• Open Manage Reports to search and load Private, Shared, or nOps Global reports.
• Save report to store your current filters, date range, chart settings, and heat map layout (when enabled).
• Pin a Shared or nOps Global report to your home Dashboard for quick access.
• Email Explorer report to send now or on a recurring schedule (daily, weekly, or monthly), with an optional Include Clara AI analysis summary for recipients.
• Create budget directly from a saved report to start a new Budget using that report’s dimensions.

Report links use this format: https://clara.nops.io/explorer?report={id} For full report management, see Reports.

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Data freshness

Explorer shows a Data updated label near the top of the page so you always know how current the numbers are.

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How Explorer compares to AWS Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer covers basics well. nOps Explorer adds:

• Richer dimensions — group and filter across billing, product, resource, tag, and Kubernetes dimensions in one place.
• More granularity — hourly views and flexible custom date ranges.
• Saved reports and sharing — save views, share URLs, and email reports with PDF attachments.
• Budget overlays — compare actual spend against a budget’s target line without switching tools.
• Heat maps — compare spend across two dimensions in one view (for example, service × account or region × tag).
• Team workflows — private, shared, and nOps Global report libraries, plus optional Clara summaries in scheduled emails.

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Examples

Analyze costs by tag

1. Open Group by and choose a tag dimension (for example, Environment).
2. Add tag filters in the Filters panel if needed.
3. Review the chart and table for spend by tag value.

Track usage trends

1. Set Usage chart to Usage or Normalized Usage.
2. Pick a granularity that matches your question (hourly for intraday peaks, monthly for trends).
3. Group by the dimension that matters most (service, account, region, and so on).

Focus on a project window

1. Choose a custom Date range for the project timeline.
2. Save the view as a Private or Shared report for repeat access.

Check spend against a budget

1. Open View By and select a budget.
2. Compare the target line on the chart against actual spend, and use the Budget Targets table for period-by-period detail.

Spot high-spend combinations across two dimensions

1. Set your date range, cost type, and any filters you need.
2. Click the grid icon above the chart to open the heat map.
3. Click Axes and pick the two dimensions you want to compare (for example, Service on the X axis and Region on the Y axis).
4. Hover cells to read exact spend, then Save report if you want your team to reopen the same heat map view.

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FAQs

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Related

• Dashboard — account-wide spend summary on your home page
• Reports — browse and manage all saved reports
• Explorer Dashboard — multi-report dashboards for your team
• Budgets — set spend targets from Explorer reports and track them over time