Resource tags are an indispensable way of categorizing the resource that you create in your AWS account. Resource tags do not represent an AWS service by themselves, but are rather an attribute that is associated with a variety of services.

Resource tags are simply name-value pairs that are associated with a resource. You can attach as many as 50 tags, as of this writing, to any given resource.

Resource tags can be helpful with the following:

• Assigning a nametag to your EC2 instances so that it is easy to differentiate them in the console.
• Billing reports for cost center tracking. For example, you could tag resources with Department = Finance so that all the resources that are used by your finance department can be grouped in a billing report.
• Applying for tag-specific permissions in IAM so that users are limited to accessing resources with a given tag.
• Assigning specific tags that can then be acted on via automation (tying into your automation theme).