How is dashboard pricing calculated?

The first three dashboards with up to 50 metrics each are free. Beyond that, each dashboard costs $3.00 per month. There is no additional charge for the number of widgets or metrics within a dashboard beyond the per-dashboard fee. Cross-account and cross-region dashboards incur the same per-dashboard cost but may generate additional cross-region data transfer charges for metrics pulled from other regions.

What widget types are available?

CloudWatch supports several widget types: metric (line, stacked area, bar, pie, number, gauge, sparkline), alarm (shows alarm state as OK/ALARM/INSUFFICIENT_DATA), text (Markdown-formatted text blocks for annotations or links), log (embedded CloudWatch Logs Insights query results), and explorer (auto-discover and graph metrics by resource tags). Each widget has configurable size (width/height in grid units) and position (x/y coordinates), giving you flexible layout control.

CloudWatch Dashboard Builder

MonitoringAWS

Build CloudWatch dashboard widget layouts with metric, alarm, and text widgets.

Last verified: May 2026

CloudWatch Configuration

Build CloudWatch dashboard widget JSON with metrics, alarms, and text widgets.

Required Fields

DashboardNameDashboardBody.widgets

{
  "DashboardName": "prod-application-dashboard",
  "DashboardBody": {
    "widgets": [
      {
        "type": "metric",
        "x": 0,
        "y": 0,
        "width": 12,
        "height": 6,
        "properties": {
          "metrics": [
            ["AWS/EC2", "CPUUtilization", "AutoScalingGroupName", "prod-web-asg", { "stat": "Average", "period": 300 }],
            [".", ".", ".", ".", { "stat": "p99", "period": 300 }]
          ],
          "title": "EC2 CPU Utilization",
          "region": "us-east-1",
          "view": "timeSeries",
          "stacked": false,
          "yAxis": { "left": { "min": 0, "max": 100 } }
        }
      },
      {
        "type": "metric",
        "x": 12,
        "y": 0,
        "width": 12,
        "height": 6,
        "properties": {
          "metrics": [
            ["AWS/ApplicationELB", "RequestCount", "LoadBalancer", "app/prod-alb/abc123", { "stat": "Sum", "period": 60 }],
            [".", "HTTPCode_Target_5XX_Count", ".", ".", { "stat": "Sum", "period": 60, "color": "#d62728" }],
            [".", "HTTPCode_Target_4XX_Count", ".", ".", { "stat": "Sum", "period": 60, "color": "#ff7f0e" }]
          ],
          "title": "ALB Request Metrics",
          "region": "us-east-1",
          "view": "timeSeries"
        }
      },
      {
        "type": "metric",
        "x": 0,
        "y": 6,
        "width": 8,
        "height": 6,
        "properties": {
          "metrics": [
            ["AWS/ApplicationELB", "TargetResponseTime", "LoadBalancer", "app/prod-alb/abc123", { "stat": "p50" }],
            [".", ".", ".", ".", { "stat": "p95" }],
            [".", ".", ".", ".", { "stat": "p99" }]
          ],
          "title": "Response Time Percentiles",
          "region": "us-east-1",
          "view": "timeSeries"
        }
      },
      {
        "type": "alarm",
        "x": 8,
        "y": 6,
        "width": 8,
        "height": 3,
        "properties": {
          "alarms": [
            "arn:aws:cloudwatch:us-east-1:123456789012:alarm:high-cpu-prod",
            "arn:aws:cloudwatch:us-east-1:123456789012:alarm:high-5xx-prod",
            "arn:aws:cloudwatch:us-east-1:123456789012:alarm:high-latency-prod"
          ],
          "title": "Active Alarms"
        }
      },
      {
        "type": "text",
        "x": 16,
        "y": 6,
        "width": 8,
        "height": 3,
        "properties": {
          "markdown": "# Production Dashboard\n**Region:** us-east-1\n**Last updated:** auto-refresh 1m"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Generated Output

Output will appear here...

See It in Action

Your team's 'production overview' dashboard has grown to 80 metrics across 30 widgets — way over the 50-metric free tier limit, costing $3/month plus the cognitive overhead of scanning a wall of graphs. The builder helps split it into 3 focused dashboards: API tier (request rate, p95 latency, 5xx rate, ALB target health), data tier (RDS connections, Aurora ACU, ElastiCache hit rate), compute tier (ASG instance count, CPU avg, deployment events). Each fits in the free tier. On-call engineers find issues faster because dashboards are scoped to specific failure modes.

What This Tool Does

CloudWatch Dashboards provide customizable home pages for monitoring AWS resources and applications. A dashboard is defined as a JSON document containing widgets — metric graphs, alarm status indicators, text blocks, log query results, and explorer widgets. Building dashboard JSON manually is tedious and error-prone because the widget specification includes nested metric arrays, stat types, period settings, and precise layout coordinates. The CloudWatch Dashboard Builder lets you visually configure widgets and generates the complete dashboard body JSON with proper metric namespaces, dimensions, and layout coordinates.

Technical Details

The builder generates CloudWatch dashboard JSON bodies with widgets array. Each widget has type (metric, alarm, text, log, explorer), x/y position and width/height in grid units, and properties specific to its type (metrics array with namespace/dimensions/stat/period for metric widgets; query string for log widgets; markdown content for text widgets). Output is the dashboard body string ready for `aws cloudwatch put-dashboard` and Terraform aws_cloudwatch_dashboard.dashboard_body.

Common Use Cases

1Building operational dashboards that combine EC2 CPU, ALB request counts, RDS connections, and Lambda error rates on a single screen
2Creating alarm status widgets that show the health of all critical alarms across multiple AWS accounts and regions
3Designing executive dashboards with KPI text widgets, single-value metrics, and trend graphs for business stakeholders

Common Questions

How is dashboard pricing calculated?: The first three dashboards with up to 50 metrics each are free. Beyond that, each dashboard costs $3.00 per month. There is no additional charge for the number of widgets or metrics within a dashboard beyond the per-dashboard fee. Cross-account and cross-region dashboards incur the same per-dashboard cost but may generate additional cross-region data transfer charges for metrics pulled from other regions.
What widget types are available?: CloudWatch supports several widget types: metric (line, stacked area, bar, pie, number, gauge, sparkline), alarm (shows alarm state as OK/ALARM/INSUFFICIENT_DATA), text (Markdown-formatted text blocks for annotations or links), log (embedded CloudWatch Logs Insights query results), and explorer (auto-discover and graph metrics by resource tags). Each widget has configurable size (width/height in grid units) and position (x/y coordinates), giving you flexible layout control.

Expert Tips

TIP

The 50-metrics-per-dashboard free tier limit is per-dashboard, not per-account. Splitting one mega-dashboard into 3 focused dashboards (one per service tier) keeps each within the free tier — saving $9/month vs paying for one expansive dashboard.

TIP

Always use the explorer widget for tagged resources instead of hand-listing instances. An explorer widget that shows 'all EC2 instances tagged env:prod' auto-includes new instances as your fleet grows. Hand-listed instances rot — they break when instances are replaced.

TIP

Markdown text widgets are underused. Add context: links to runbooks, descriptions of what each section means, oncall contact info. A dashboard without context requires the viewer to know what's normal — text widgets answer 'what should this look like?' for anyone glancing at the dashboard.

Related Learning Guides

CloudWatch & Observability Guide24 min read

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