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.

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...

About This Tool

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.

When to Use This Tool

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

Frequently Asked 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.

Related Learning Guides

CloudWatch & Observability Guide24 min read

Disclaimer: This tool runs entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers. Always verify outputs before using them in production. AWS, Azure, and GCP are trademarks of their respective owners.