AWS bill line item
CW:Requests
The per-1,000-request charge for CloudWatch API calls beyond the free tier (most visibly reads of metric data), billed once you exceed the free allotment.
CloudWatch API requests
Verified against official AWS documentation last checked
Why it shows up
Third-party dashboards and monitoring tools that poll CloudWatch on a schedule across every region in your account generate a steady stream of metric-read calls. It's an irony: a tool bought to give you visibility can itself become a line item on the bill.
AWS's own documentation calls this out directly: frequent programmatic reads of metric data can noticeably increase cost, and third-party monitoring tools often drive it by pulling data on a tight schedule to generate their own dashboards.
How to cut it
- Restrict third-party integrations to the regions and namespaces you monitor instead of default "all regions" polling.
- Switch high-frequency integrations from metric polling to a metric-streaming approach that pushes data instead of being polled.
- Batch metric-publishing calls instead of one call per metric.
- Identify which caller or principal is generating the request volume before optimizing.
How to read a usage type
The colon in CW:Requests doesn't introduce an instance type the way it does in a code like BoxUsage:m5.large. This code carries no region or direction token either, so there's nothing to break down here.
Source
Source: AWS docs →Found CW:Requests on your own bill?
Drop your Cost Explorer CSV into the AWS Bill Analyzer. It'll flag line items like this one on your own bill and link straight back to the fix.
Analyze your own bill →The invoice is a lagging signal.
A monthly invoice tells you what already happened. CostMon builds a daily baseline, so a spike stands out while you can still act on it.