AWS Budgets
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For Agents
Create and manage AWS cost, usage, and reservation budgets, configure threshold notifications and subscribers, and trigger automated budget actions when limits are crossed.
Use for: I need to create a $5,000 monthly cost budget for the data team, Set up a notification when spend forecasts exceed budget, Add an email subscriber to a budget, Create a budget action that stops EC2 instances when budget is exceeded
Not supported: Does not provide cost analytics, anomaly detection, or invoice line-item data. Use for budget creation, notifications, and automated enforcement actions only.
AWS Budgets lets you plan and track service usage, service costs, and reservation utilisation across an AWS account or organisation. The API supports four budget types: cost budgets, usage budgets, RI utilisation budgets, and RI coverage budgets, each with thresholds that trigger notifications to subscribers when actual or forecasted spend crosses the limit. Budget actions extend this with automatic responses such as applying a restrictive IAM policy, stopping EC2 or RDS instances, or attaching a deny policy to a Service Control Policy when a budget is exceeded.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the AWS Budgets to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the AWS Budgets, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with AWS Budgets API.
Create cost, usage, RI utilisation, or RI coverage budgets with monthly, quarterly, or annual cadence
Define budget thresholds at percentages of actual or forecasted spend that emit notifications
Subscribe SNS topics or email addresses to receive budget breach alerts
Create budget actions that apply an IAM policy, attach an SCP, or stop EC2 or RDS instances when a threshold is crossed
Update an existing budget's amount, period, or filters in place
Describe budget performance history to see actual versus budgeted spend over time
List all budgets in an account along with their notifications and current utilisation
Use Cases
Patterns agents use AWS Budgets API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Team-Level Monthly Cost Budget
Cap each team's monthly AWS spend with a budget that filters by tag (CostCenter=DataTeam) and notifies the team lead at 80 percent and 100 percent of actual cost. CreateBudget defines the limit and filters; CreateNotification adds the threshold; CreateSubscriber attaches the team lead's email or an SNS topic. The team gets early warning before they overspend without finance manually reviewing each invoice.
CreateBudget with budgetName=data-team-monthly, budgetType=COST, amount=5000 USD, timeUnit=MONTHLY, filtered to tag CostCenter:DataTeam, then add notifications at 80 and 100 percent ACTUAL with the lead's email as subscriber.
Auto-Stop on Budget Breach
Stop runaway EC2 or RDS spend automatically when a development account's budget is exceeded. Create a budget action of type STOP_EC2_INSTANCES targeting tagged instances, with an action threshold tied to the budget. AWS Budgets evaluates actual spend daily and triggers the action when the threshold is crossed, optionally requiring manual approval. Suitable for sandboxes, training accounts, and demo environments.
CreateBudgetAction on budget dev-account with actionType=APPLY_IAM_POLICY, definition.iamActionDefinition.policyArn=arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AWSDenyAll, actionThreshold=100 ACTUAL, approvalModel=AUTOMATIC.
RI Utilisation Tracking
Spot under-utilised Reserved Instances early so you can sell unused RIs on the Marketplace or rightsize them on renewal. Create an RI_UTILIZATION budget with a target percentage; AWS Budgets alerts when utilisation falls below the threshold across the chosen RI scope. Pair with a quarterly review to keep reservation spend aligned with actual usage.
CreateBudget with budgetType=RI_UTILIZATION, budgetLimit.amount=80 (percent), timeUnit=MONTHLY, costFilters by Service=EC2, plus a notification at 80 percent ACTUAL falling below the threshold.
Agent-Driven FinOps Operator
Let a FinOps agent enforce monthly budgets for every team in an organisation: create a budget per team tag, attach standard notifications, and roll budget summary into a weekly Slack post. The agent calls AWS Budgets through Jentic to script the policy, so credentials never leave the vault and the same playbook runs unchanged across multiple AWS accounts.
Search Jentic for 'create an AWS budget', execute it with parameters generated for each team tag, then call DescribeBudgets weekly to compute actual vs budgeted spend and post the deltas to Slack.
Key Endpoints
23 endpoints — aws budgets lets you plan and track service usage, service costs, and reservation utilisation across an aws account or organisation.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateBudget
Create a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.UpdateBudget
Update a budget's amount or filters
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DeleteBudget
Delete a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DescribeBudget
Describe a single budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DescribeBudgets
List budgets
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateNotification
Create a notification on a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateSubscriber
Add a subscriber to a notification
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateBudgetAction
Create an automated budget action
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateBudget
Create a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.UpdateBudget
Update a budget's amount or filters
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DeleteBudget
Delete a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DescribeBudget
Describe a single budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.DescribeBudgets
List budgets
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateNotification
Create a notification on a budget
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateSubscriber
Add a subscriber to a notification
POST
/#X-Amz-Target=AWSBudgetServiceGateway.CreateBudgetAction
Create an automated budget action
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
AWS access key ID and secret access key for AWS Budgets are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped, short-lived signing credentials and the raw IAM secrets never enter the agent context. Jentic computes the AWS Signature Version 4 signature server-side for every request.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent (for example, 'create an AWS budget') and Jentic returns matching AWS Budgets operations with their input schemas, the correct AWS service endpoint, and the required IAM action, so the agent can invoke the right call without crawling the AWS docs.
Time to first call
Direct AWS Budgets integration: 1-3 days for AWS SDK setup, IAM role configuration, Sigv4 signing, and error handling. Through Jentic: under 1 hour, search, load schema, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using AWS Budgets API through Jentic.
What authentication does the AWS Budgets API use?
All requests are signed with AWS Signature Version 4 using an AWS access key ID and secret access key. Through Jentic, those credentials live encrypted in the vault and Jentic performs the signing server-side; the agent only sees a scoped Jentic credential reference.
Can I trigger automated actions when a budget is exceeded?
Yes. CreateBudgetAction supports APPLY_IAM_POLICY, APPLY_SCP_POLICY, RUN_SSM_DOCUMENTS, and EC2/RDS instance stop actions. Each action has a threshold tied to actual or forecasted spend and an approval model of AUTOMATIC or MANUAL.
What budget types are supported?
AWS Budgets supports four types: COST (dollars spent), USAGE (units of a service), RI_UTILIZATION (percent of RI hours used), and RI_COVERAGE (percent of eligible usage covered by RIs). Set the type via budgetType when calling CreateBudget.
How do I set up a $1,000 monthly budget with email alerts through Jentic?
Search Jentic for 'create an AWS budget', execute it with budgetName, budgetType=COST, budgetLimit.amount=1000, timeUnit=MONTHLY. Then run 'create a budget notification' at 80 percent ACTUAL and 'create a budget subscriber' with subscriptionType=EMAIL and the alert address. Each call maps directly to a CreateBudget, CreateNotification, and CreateSubscriber operation.
What are the rate limits for the AWS Budgets API?
Standard AWS service throttling applies. Budgets data refreshes once or more per day; high-frequency polling of DescribeBudgets is unnecessary because actual spend updates on AWS's daily cycle, not in real time.
Is AWS Budgets free to use?
The first two action-enabled budgets per account are free. Beyond that, AWS charges a small per-budget per-day fee for action-enabled budgets and a separate per-day fee for additional standard budgets. Notifications and subscribers themselves carry no extra charge beyond the SNS publishing cost where applicable.
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