Console steps Command line examples Global View (cross-Region)

Find your Amazon EC2 resources

You can get a list of some types of resources using the Amazon EC2 console. You can get a list of each type of resource using its corresponding command or API action. If you have many resources, you can filter the results to include, or exclude, only the resources that match certain criteria.

Console steps
Command line examples
Global View (cross-Region)

List and filter resources using the console

List resources using the console

You can view the most common Amazon EC2 resource types using the console. To view additional resources, use the command line interface or the API actions.

To list EC2 resources using the console

Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
Amazon EC2 resources are specific to an AWS Region. From the navigation bar, choose a Region from the Regions selector.
In the navigation pane, choose the option that corresponds to the resource type. For example, to list all your instances, choose Instances.

Filter resources using the console

To filter a list of resources

In the navigation pane, select a resource type (for example, Instances).
Choose the search field.
Select the filter from the list.
Select an operator, for example, = (Equals). Some attributes have more available operators to select. Note that not all screens support selecting an operator.
Select a filter value.
To edit a selected filter, choose the filter token (blue box), make the required edits, and then choose Apply. Note that not all screens support editing the selected filter.
When you are finished, remove the filter.

Supported filters

The Amazon EC2 console supports two types of filtering.

API filtering happens on the server side. The filtering is applied on the API call, which reduces the number of resources returned by the server. It allows for quick filtering across large sets of resources, and it can reduce data transfer time and cost between the server and the browser. API filtering supports = (equals) and : (contains) operators, and is always case sensitive.
Client filtering happens on the client side. It enables you to filter down on data that is already available in the browser (in other words, data that has already been returned by the API). Client filtering works well in conjunction with an API filter to filter down to smaller data sets in the browser. In addition to = (equals) and : (contains) operators, client filtering can also support range operators, such as >= (greater than or equal), and negation (inverse) operators, such as != (does not equal).

The Amazon EC2 console supports the following types of searches:

Search by keyword

Searching by keyword is a free text search that lets you search for a value across all of your resources' attributes or tags, without specifying an attribute or tag key to search.

Note

All keyword searches use client filtering.

To search by keyword, enter or paste what you’re looking for in the search field, and then choose Enter. For example, searching for 123 matches all instances that have 123 in any of their attributes, such as an IP address, instance ID, VPC ID, or AMI ID, or in any of their tags, such as the Name. If your free text search returns unexpected matches, apply additional filters.

Search by attribute

Searching by an attribute lets you search a specific attribute across all of your resources.

Note

Attribute searches use either API filtering or client filtering, depending on the selected attribute. When performing an attribute search, the attributes are grouped accordingly.

For example, you can search the Instance state attribute for all of your instances to return only instances that are in the stopped state. To do this:

In the search field on the Instances screen, start entering Instance state. As you enter the characters, the two types of filters appear for Instance state: API filters and Client filters.
To search on the server side, choose Instance state under API filters. To search on the client side, choose Instance state (client) under Client filters.

A list of possible operators for the selected attribute appears.
Choose the = (Equals) operator.

A list of possible values for the selected attribute and operator appears.
Choose stopped from the list.

Search by tag

Searching by a tag lets you filter the resources in the currently displayed table by a tag key or a tag value.

Tag searches use either API filtering or client filtering, depending on the settings in the Preferences window.

To ensure API filtering for tags

Open the Preferences window.
Clear the Use regular expression matching checkbox. If this checkbox is selected, client filtering is performed.
Select the Use case sensitive matching checkbox. If this checkbox is cleared, client filtering is performed.
Choose Confirm.

When searching by tag, you can use the following values:

(empty) – Find all resources with the specified tag key, but there must be no tag value.
All values – Find all resources with the specified tag key and any tag value.
Not tagged – Find all resources that do not have the specified tag key.
The displayed value – Find all resources with the specified tag key and the specified tag value.

You can use the following techniques to enhance or refine your searches:

Inverse search

Inverse searches let you search for resources that do not match a specified value. In the Instances and AMIs screens, inverse searches are performed by selecting the != (Does not equal) or !: (Does not contain) operator and then selecting a value. In other screens, inverse searches are performed by prefixing the search keyword with the exclamation mark (!) character.

Note

Inverse search is supported with keyword searches and attribute searches on client filters only. It is not supported with attribute searches on API filters.

For example, you can search the Instance state attribute for all of your instances to exclude all instances that are in the terminated state. To do this:

In the search field on the Instances screen, start entering Instance state. As you enter the characters, the two types of filters appear for Instance state: API filters and Client filters.
Under Client filters, choose Instance state (client). Inverse search is only supported on client filters.

A list of possible operators for the selected attribute appears.
Choose != (Does not equal), and then choose terminated.

To filter instances based on an instance state attribute, you can also use the search icons ( ) in the Instance state column. The search icon with a plus sign ( + ) displays all the instances that match that attribute. The search icon with a minus sign ( - ) excludes all instances that match that attribute.

Here is another example of using the inverse search: To list all instances that are not assigned the security group named launch-wizard-1, under Client filters, search by the Security group name attribute, choose !=, and in the search bar, enter launch-wizard-1.

Partial search

With partial searches, you can search for partial string values. To perform a partial search, enter only a part of the keyword that you want to search for. On the Instances and AMIs screens, partial searches can only be performed with the : (Contains) operator. On other screens, you can select the client filter attribute and immediately enter only a part of the keyword that you want to search for. For example, on the Instance type screen, to search for all t2.micro, t2.small, and t2.medium instances, search by the Instance Type attribute, and for the keyword, enter t2.

Regular expression search

To use regular expression searches, you must select the Use regular expression matching checkbox in the Preferences window.

Regular expressions are useful when you need to match the values in a field with a specific pattern. For example, to search for a value that starts with s, search for ^s. To search for a value that ends with xyz, search for xyz$. Or to search for a value that starts with a number that is followed by one or more characters, search for [0-9]+.*.

Note

Regular expression search is supported with keyword searches and attribute searches on client filters only. It is not supported with attribute searches on API filters.

Case-sensitive search

To use case-sensitive searches, you must select the Use case sensitive matching checkbox in the Preferences window. The case-sensitive preference only applies to client and tag filters.

Note

API filters are always case-sensitive.

Wildcard search

Use the * wildcard to match zero or more characters. Use the ? wildcard to match zero or one character. For example, if you have a data set with the values prod, prods, and production, a search of prod* matches all values, whereas prod? matches only prod and prods. To use the literal values, escape them with a backslash (\). For example, "prod\*" would match prod*.

Note

Wildcard search is supported with attribute and tag searches on API filters only. It is not supported with keyword searches, and with attribute and tag searches on client filters.

Combining searches

In general, multiple filters with the same attribute are automatically joined with OR. For example, searching for Instance State : Running and Instance State : Stopped returns all instances that are either running OR stopped. To join search with AND, search across different attributes. For example, searching for Instance State : Running and Instance Type : c4.large returns only instances that are of type c4.large AND that are in the running state.

Save filter sets using the console

A saved filter set is a customized group of filters that you can create and reuse to efficiently view your Amazon EC2 resources. This feature helps streamline your workflow, enabling quick access to specific resource views.

Key features

Customization: Create filter sets tailored to your needs. For example, you can create a filter set to display only your gp3 volumes that were created after a specified date.
Default filter: Set a default filter set for a page, and the default filters are automatically applied when you navigate to the page. If no default is set, no filters are applied.
Easy application: Select a saved filter set to apply it instantly. Amazon EC2 then displays the relevant resources, with the active filters indicated by blue tokens.
Flexibility: Create, modify, and delete filter sets as needed.

Saved filter sets are only supported in the Amazon EC2 console and are currently only available for the Volumes page.

Create a filter set

To create a new filter set

Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
In the navigation pane, choose a resource, for example, Volumes.
In the search field, select filters for your filter set.
Choose the arrow next to the Clear filters button, and choose Save new filter set.
In the Save filter set window, do the following:
1. For Filter set name, enter a name for the filter set.
2. (Optional) For Filter set description, enter a description for the filter set.
3. (Optional) To set the filter set as the default filter, select the Set as default checkbox.
  
  Note
  The default filter is automatically applied every time you open the console page.
4. Choose Save.

Modify a filter set

To modify a filter set

From the Saved filter sets list, select the filter to modify.
To add a filter, in the search field, select a filter to add to your filter set. To delete a filter in the set, choose the X on the filter token.
Choose the arrow next to the Clear filters button, and choose Modify filter set.
In the Modify filter set window, do the following:
1. (Optional) To set the filter set as the default filter, select the Set as default checkbox.
  
  Note
  The default filter is automatically applied every time you open the console page.
2. Choose Modify.

Delete a filter set

To delete a filter set

From the Saved filter sets list, select the filter to delete.
Choose the arrow next to the Clear filters button, and choose Delete filter set.
In the Delete filter set window, review the filter to confirm this is the filter you want to delete, and then choose Delete.

List and filter using the command line

Each resource type has a corresponding API actions that you use to describe, list, or get resources of that type. The resulting lists of resources can be long, so it can be faster and more useful to filter the results to include only the resources that match specific criteria.

Filtering considerations

You can specify up to 50 filters and up to 200 values per filter in a single request.
Filter strings can be up to 255 characters in length.
You can use wildcards with the filter values. An asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters, and a question mark (?) matches zero or one character.
Filter values are case sensitive.
Your search can include the literal values of the wildcard characters; you just need to escape them with a backslash before the character. For example, a value of \*amazon\?\\ searches for the literal string *amazon?\.
You can't specify a filter value of null. Instead, use client-side filtering. For example, the following command uses the --query option and returns the IDs of the instances that were launched without a key pair.
```
aws ec2 describe-instances \
    --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[?!not_null(KeyName)].InstanceId' \
    --output text
```

AWS CLI

Example: Specify a single filter

You can list your Amazon EC2 instances using describe-instances. Without filters, the response contains information for all of your resources. You can use the following option to include only the running instances in the output.


--filters Name=instance-state-name,Values=running

To list only the instance IDs for your running instances, add the --query option as follows.


--query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].InstanceId"

Example: Specify multiple filters or filter values

If you specify multiple filters or multiple filter values, the resource must match all filters to be included in the output.

You can use the following option to list all instances whose type is either m5.large or m5d.large.


--filters Name=instance-type,Values=m5.large,m5d.large

You can use the following option to list all stopped instances whose type is t2.micro.


--filters Name=instance-state-name,Values=stopped Name=instance-type,Values=t2.micro

Example: Use wildcards in a filter value

You can use the following option with describe-snapshots to return only the snapshots whose description is "database".


--filters Name=description,Values=database

The * wildcard matches zero or more characters. You can use the following option to return only the snapshots whose description includes the word database.


--filters Name=description,Values=*database*

The ? wildcard matches exactly 1 character. You can use the following option to return only the snapshots whose description is "database" or "database" followed by one character.


--filters Name=description,Values=database?

You can use the following option to return only the snapshots whose description is "database" followed by up to four characters. This excludes descriptions with "database" followed by five or more characters.


--filters Name=description,Values=database????

Example: Filter based on date

With the AWS CLI, you can use JMESPath to filter results using expressions. For example, the following describe-snapshots command displays the IDs of all snapshots created by the specified AWS account before the specified date. If you do not specify the owner, the results include all public snapshots.


aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
    --filters Name=owner-id,Values=123456789012 \
    --query "Snapshots[?(StartTime<='2024-03-31')].[SnapshotId]" \
    --output text

The following example displays the IDs of all snapshots created in the specified date range.


aws ec2 describe-snapshots \
    --filters Name=owner-id,Values=123456789012 \
    --query "Snapshots[?(StartTime>='2024-01-01') && (StartTime<='2024-12-31')].[SnapshotId]" \
    --output text

Example: Filter based on tags

For examples of how to filter a list of resources according to their tags, see Filter Amazon EC2 resources by tag.

PowerShell

Example: Specify a single filter

You can list your Amazon EC2 instances using Get-EC2Instance. Without filters, the response contains information for all of your resources. You can use the following parameter to include only the running instances in the output.


-Filter @{Name="instance-state-name"; Values="running"}

The following example lists only the instance IDs for your running instances.


(Get-EC2Instance -Filter @{Name="instance-state-name"; Values="stopped"}).Instances | Select InstanceId

Example: Specify multiple filters or filter values

If you specify multiple filters or multiple filter values, the resource must match all filters to be included in the results.

You can use the following option to list all instances whose type is either m5.large or m5d.large.


-Filter @{Name="instance-type"; Values="m5.large", "m5d.large"}

You can use the following option to list all stopped instances whose type is t2.micro.


-Filter @{Name="instance-state-name"; Values="stopped"}, @{Name="instance-type"; Values="t2.micro"}

View resources across Regions using Amazon EC2 Global View

Amazon EC2 Global View enables you to view and search for Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC resources in a single AWS Region, or across multiple Regions simultaneously in a single console. For more information, see View resources across Regions using Amazon EC2 Global View.

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Document Conventions

Select a Region for your resources

Amazon EC2 Global View

Find your Amazon EC2 resources

Contents

List and filter resources using the console

Contents

List resources using the console

To list EC2 resources using the console

Filter resources using the console

To filter a list of resources

Supported filters

Note

Note

To ensure API filtering for tags

Note

Note

Note

Note

Save filter sets using the console

Key features

Create a filter set

To create a new filter set

Note

Modify a filter set

To modify a filter set

Note

Delete a filter set

To delete a filter set

List and filter using the command line

Filtering considerations

Example: Specify a single filter

Example: Specify multiple filters or filter values

Example: Use wildcards in a filter value

Example: Filter based on date

Example: Filter based on tags

Example: Specify a single filter

Example: Specify multiple filters or filter values

View resources across Regions using Amazon EC2 Global View