SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question
Exhibit
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"ce:GetCostAndUsage",
"ce:GetReservationUtilization",
"ce:GetSavingsPlansUtilization"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}Refer to the exhibit. A junior cloud financial analyst needs to monitor and optimize costs across the organization's AWS account. The analyst requires the ability to view historical cost data and check how effectively Reserved Instances and Savings Plans are being used. Which AWS service is the analyst most likely using with this IAM policy?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is that AWS Budgets and Trusted Advisor both touch on cost, so candidates pick them — but only Cost Explorer provides historical cost data plus RI/Savings Plans utilization and coverage reports, which the question explicitly requires.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost Explorer provides historical cost and usage data, forecasting, and — critically — Reserved Instance (RI) and Savings Plans utilization and coverage reports. The IAM policy granting access to Cost Explorer APIs (ce:GetCostAndUsage, ce:GetReservationUtilization, ce:GetSavingsPlansUtilization) confirms this is the service in use.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Budgets
Why it's wrong here
AWS Budgets allows users to set custom budgets that alert them when costs or usage exceed certain thresholds. While related to cost management, the specific actions in the exhibit, like GetCostAndUsage and GetSavingsPlansUtilization, are programmatic calls specifically designed for retrieving data from the Cost Explorer API for visualization and analysis.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations for cost optimization, security, and performance based on best practices. However, it uses different IAM permissions to check service limits and configurations. It does not primarily use the 'ce:' prefix actions shown in the exhibit, which are dedicated to the Cost Explorer service.
- ✓
AWS Cost Explorer
Why this is correct
AWS Cost Explorer is the service that enables users to query cost and usage data programmatically or via the console. The permissions listed in the exhibit allow the analyst to retrieve granular data about spending and the efficiency of their commitment-based pricing models, which is the core functionality of Cost Explorer.
- ✗
AWS Compute Optimizer
Why it's wrong here
AWS Compute Optimizer uses machine learning to recommend optimal AWS resources for workloads to reduce costs and improve performance. It focuses on rightsizing EC2 instances, EBS volumes, and Lambda functions. It does not use the cost-retrieval APIs defined in the exhibit, as its logic is based on performance metrics.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAA-C03 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAA-C03 exam.