Cloud Cost Trends API

This feature is only available in Kubecost Aggregator.

Cloud Cost Trends API

GET http://<your-kubecost-address>/model/cloudCost/view/trends

Analyzes change in cloud costs relative to a previous window of the same size

Path Parameters

Name	Type	Description
window*	string	Duration of time over which to query. Compares cost usage of window to cost usage window of equal size directly preceding it. Accepts all standard Kubecost window formats (See our doc on using the window parameter).
names*	string	Determines order sequence of queried items via comma-separated list. Dependent on the value of aggregate to list items. See more below.
aggregate	string	Field by which to aggregate the results. Accepts: invoiceEntityID, accountID, provider, service, and label:<name>. Supports multi-aggregation using comma-separated lists, such as aggregate=accountID,service. When no value is provided, the query will aggregate by individual items.
accumulate	boolean	When set to false, returns daily time series data vs. cumulative data. Default is true.
CostMetricName	string	Determines which cloud cost metric type will be returned. Acceptable values are AmortizedNetCost, InvoicedCost, ListCost, and NetCost. Default is AmortizedNetCost.
filter	string	Filter your results by a particular category or value. For example, when to only see trends in AWS spend, set this parameter to filter=provider:"AWS". Supports Filter Parameters (v2) language.

200: OK

{
    "code": 200,
    "data": {
        "trends": {
            "": {
                "isInfinite": false,
                "isNaN": false,
                "value": 0.000
            }
        },
        "window": {
            "start": "",
            "end": ""
        },
        "comparisonWindow": {
            "start": "",
            "end": ""
        }
    }
}

Calculating trend value

The Trends API determines changes in resource cost usage over time based on the interval set window parameter and provides that information via the schema field value. Cost usage for the current window sampled will be compared with comparisonWindow, the window directly before the current window of the same size interval. For example, for window=3d, Kubecost will output cost usage for the past three days compared to cost usage of the three days before the start of the window. This means a total of six days of cloud cost data are sampled in order to provide an accurate value.

The equation for calculating value is: value=window/comparisonWindow - 1

Receiving a positive value means spending has increased in the current window when compared to comparisonWindow. A negative value means spending has decreased.

It's important to recognize when a resource is not detected to exist in the previous window. This is designated by the field IsInfinite=true, which means the allocation could not be determined to exist. Otherwise, the cause of an unexpected or major trend change could be misattributed. The field isNaN, meaning not a number, refers to if the value is unreal. If so, isNan should return true, which means there was an error during calculation. Both fields should return false during a successful query.

In the example output below, value is expressed as -0.147, meaning spending has decreased for project-123 by roughly 14.7%.

        "trends": {
            "project-123": {
                "isInfinite": false,
                "isNaN": false,
                "value": -0.1472170691451784
            }
        },
        "window": {
            "start": "2023-11-29T00:00:00Z",
            "end": "2023-12-06T00:00:00Z"
        },
        "comparisonWindow": {
            "start": "2023-11-22T00:00:00Z",
            "end": "2023-11-29T00:00:00Z"
        }

Trend values are converted into percentages in the Kubecost Cloud Costs Explorer page, calculated based on your current query. Trends will be presented in the rightmost column, next to your Total cost. The window parameter is determined by your selected date range in the top right of the page. The default is Last 7 days (window=7d). The equation value*100 is used to provide percentages.

Using the names parameter

names is a mandatory parameter which determines the sequence of items returned, based on whatever the query is aggregating by. For example, when using aggregate=provider, the user should provide a comma-separated list of all providers they wish to see trend values for in this category. In this case, they should provide names=AWS,GCP,Azure to receive a list of trend values for all three providers. If the user does not provide a value for aggregate, they must still use the names parameter to list all line items requested.