Cloud Cost Explorer

The Cloud Cost Explorer is a dashboard which provides visualization and filtering of your cloud spending. This dashboard includes the costs for all assets in your connected cloud accounts by pulling from those providers' Cost and Usage Reports (CURs) or other cloud billing reports.

Cloud Cost Explorer dashboard

If you haven't performed a successful billing integration with a cloud service provider, the Cloud Cost Explorer won't have cost data to display. Before using the Cloud Cost Explorer, make sure to read our Cloud Billing Integrations guide to get started, then see our specific articles for the cloud service providers you want to integrate with.

Installation and configuration

As of v1.104, Cloud Cost is enabled by default. If you are using v1.04+, you can skip the Installation and Configuration section.

For versions of Kubecost up to v1.103, Cloud Cost needs to be enabled first through Helm, using the following parameters:

kubecostModel:
  cloudCost:
     enabled: true
     labelList:
       IsIncludeList: false
       # format labels as comma separated string (ex. "label1,label2,label3")
       labels: ""
     topNItems: 1000

Enabling Cloud Cost is required. Optional parameters include:

• labelList.labels: Comma-separated list of labels; empty string indicates that the list is disabled

• labelList.IsIncludeList: If true, label list is a white list; if false, it is a black list

• topNItems: number of sampled "top items" to collect per day

While Cloud Cost is enabled, it is recommended to disable Cloud Usage, which is more memory-intensive.

kubecostModel:
  etlCloudUsage: false

Disabling Cloud Usage will restrict functionality of your Assets dashboard. This is intentional. Learn more about Cloud Usage here.

Using topNitems

Item-level data in the Cloud Cost Explorer is only a sample of the most expensive entries, determined by the Helm flag topNitems. This value can be increased substantially but can lead to higher memory consumption. If you receive a message in the UI "We don't have item-level data with the current filters applied" when attempting to filter, you may need to expand the value of topNitems (default is 1,000), or reconfigure your query.

Configuring your query

Date range

You can adjust your displayed metrics using the date range feature, represented by Last 7 days, the default range. This will control the time range of metrics that appear. Select the date range of the report by setting specific start and end dates, or by using one of the preset options.

Aggregate filters

You can adjust your displayed metrics by aggregating your cost by category. Supported fields are Workspace, Provider, Billing Account, Service Item, as well as custom labels. The Cloud Cost Explorer dashboard supports single and multi-aggregation. See the table below for descriptions of each field.

Aggregation	Description
Account	The ID of the billing account your cloud provider bill comes from. (ex: AWS Management/Payer Account ID, GCP Billing Account ID, Azure Billing Account ID)
Provider	Cloud service provider (ex: AWS, Azure, GCP)
Invoice Entity	Cloud provider account (ex: AWS Account, Azure Subscription, GCP Project)
Service	Cloud provider services (ex: S3, microsoft.compute, BigQuery)
Item	Individual items from your cloud billing report(s)
Labels	Labels/tags on your cloud resources (ex: AWS tags, Azure tags, GCP labels)

Edit

Selecting the Edit button will allow for additional filtering and pricing display options for your cloud data.

Add filters

You can filter displayed dashboard metrics by selecting Edit, then adding a filter. Filters can be created for the following categories to view costs exclusively for items (see descriptions of each category in the Aggregate filters table above):

• Service

• Account

• Invoice Entity

• Provider

• Labels

Cost Metric

The Cost Metric dropdown allows you to adjust the displayed cost data based on different calculations. Cost Metric values are based on and calculated following standard FinOps dimensions and metrics, but may be calculated differently depending on your CSP. Learn more about how these metrics are calculated by each CSP in the Cloud Cost Metrics doc. The five available metrics supported by the Cloud Cost Explorer are:

Cost Metric	Description
Amortized Net Cost	Net Cost with removed cash upfront fees and amortized (default)
Net Cost	Costs inclusive of discounts and credits. Will also include one-time and recurring charges.
List Cost	CSP pricing without any discounts
Invoiced Cost	Pricing based on usage during billing period
Amortized Cost	Effective/upfront cost across the billing period

Cost table metrics

Your cloud cost spending will be displayed across your dashboard with several key metrics:

• K8s Utilization: Percent of cost which can be traced back to Kubernetes cluster

• Total cost: Total cloud spending

• Sum of Sample Data: Only when aggregating by Item. Only lists the top cost for the timeframe selected. Displays that may not match your CUR.

All line items, after aggregation, should be selectable, allowing you to drill down to further analyze your spending. For example, when aggregating cloud spend by Service, you can select an individual cloud service (AmazonEC2, for example) and view spending, K8s utilization, and other details unique to that item.