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CloudPouch Docs

How to switch between AWS accounts without logging in and out

For cost review, you can take the browser out of account switching entirely: CloudPouch switches between AWS accounts with Cmd/Ctrl + K — a local profile switch that takes seconds, works across accounts from completely different AWS organizations, and doesn’t touch a login screen.

Why switching accounts in the browser is slow

Section titled “Why switching accounts in the browser is slow”

The AWS Console ties your session to one account at a time, so checking something in a second account means signing out and signing back in — or juggling incognito windows, browser containers, or separate browser profiles to hold multiple sessions open. With IAM Identity Center you re-enter through the access portal and pick the account and role again.

For cost work specifically, the login is only half the cost. Cost Explorer doesn’t carry your setup across accounts: after each switch you navigate back to it and rebuild the view — date range, granularity, grouping, filters — from scratch. Multiply that by a handful of accounts and a routine cost check turns into many minutes of clicking, most of it just getting to the data. And when the accounts belong to different organizations — several clients, or a personal account plus a work account — there is no consolidated view that could save you: each organization is a separate world with separate logins.

Switch with a keystroke instead

Section titled “Switch with a keystroke instead”

CloudPouch runs on your desktop and reads the same ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials files as the AWS CLI. Every account you can reach from the CLI is one profile entry — and switching between profiles is local:

  1. Press Cmd/Ctrl + K. A command palette labeled Search AWS profiles… opens.
  2. Type part of the profile name to filter, Up/Down to navigate, Enter to switch.
  3. You are looking at the other account’s cost data — same app, same layout, no login page, no view to rebuild.

The switcher lists named profiles with static credentials, AWS SSO profiles, and role-chaining profiles that use source_profile. Accounts from different organizations sit next to each other in the same list; switching between them is no different from switching between two accounts of the same organization.

What about signing in?

Section titled “What about signing in?”

A profile switch is not an authentication bypass — each profile still needs valid credentials. In practice this stays out of your way:

  • Static credentials and role-chaining profiles work immediately, every time.
  • SSO profiles reuse an active session. If you define one sso-session block in ~/.aws/config and reference it from many profiles, a single browser sign-in covers all of them until the session expires.
  • When an SSO session has expired, CloudPouch launches the browser sign-in automatically; complete it once and you’re back in the app.

So the browser appears once per SSO session — not once per account switch.

Where this applies

Section titled “Where this applies”

CloudPouch is an AWS cost analysis app, so this fast switching covers cost and resource review: spend charts, service drill-downs, and Cost Insights that scan an account for savings opportunities. If you need to administer resources in many accounts, you still need the console or the CLI — but if the reason you keep re-logging is “what is this account spending?”, the whole loop fits in CloudPouch. For the full account-after-account review workflow, see How to review costs across many AWS accounts.

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