Kubecost API Directory

Welcome to the Kubecost API library! This directory will show you how Kubecost APIs can assist in monitoring, maintaining, and optimizing your cloud spend. Learn also how Kubecost APIs power different features of the UI below.

Kubecost APIs

Monitoring APIs

Allocation API

The Allocation API retrieves cost allocation information for any Kubernetes concept, e.g. cost by namespace, label, deployment, service, and more. This API is directly integrated with the Kubecost ETL caching layer and CSV pipeline so it can scale for large clusters.

Allocation Trends API

The Allocation Trends API compares cost usage between two windows of the same duration and presents a percentage value showing the change in cost.

Assets API

The Assets API retrieves the backing cost data broken down by individual Kubernetes assets (e.g. node, disk, etc.), and provides various aggregations of this data. Optionally provides the ability to integrate with external cloud assets.

Asset Diff API

The Asset Diff API compares two asset sets between two windows of the same duration and accumulates the results.

Cloud Costs API

The Cloud Costs API retrieves cloud cost data from cloud providers by reading cost and usage reports.

Cloud Cost Trends API

The Cloud Cost Trends API compares cost usage between two windows of the same duration and presents a percentage value showing the change in cloud costs.

External Costs API

The External Costs API displays costs related to third party services, currently limited to Datadog.

Governance APIs

Budget API

The Budget API allows you to establish spending budget rules for your workloads to ensure you don't go over your allotted budget.

Forecast API

The Forecast API uses a predictive learning model to approximate future spend of Allocation, Assets, or Cloud Cost data.

Cost Events Audit API

The Cost Events Audit API presents recent changes at the cluster level.

Predict API

The Prediction API takes Kubernetes objects as input and produces an estimation of the cost impact when making changes to your workload.

Diagnostic APIs

Events API

The Events API provides a log of different occurrences in your workload in order to help with troubleshooting. Logs generated with this API are helpful for submitting bug reports.

Aggregator Diagnostic APIs

These diagnostic APIs for Aggregator are designed to assist in troubleshooting without inspecting the PV directly.

Savings APIs

Savings endpoints provide cost optimization insights. The following savings endpoints are available at http://<kubecost-address>/model/ENDPOINT:

Endpoint	Description
/savings	Provides cluster-level potential savings estimates based on specific savings opportunities available in other endpoints.
/savings/clusterSizingETL	Provides recommendations for sizing clusters (node types and quantities).
/savings/requestSizingV2	Provides recommendations for setting container resource requests.
/savings/abandonedWorkloads	List abandoned workloads based on network traffic.
/cluster/requestsizer/planV2	Applies Kubecost's container request recommendations to your cluster.
/projectDisks	List orphaned disks.
/projectAddresses	List orphaned IP addresses.

Kubecost UI counterparts

Many, but not all, Kubecost APIs power different features in the Kubecost UI. The UI counterpart may not fully reflect all functionality of the corresponding API. Please consult the original API docs for complete details.

API Name	UI Equivalent
Allocation API	Allocations dashboard
Allocation/Cloud Cost Explorer Trends API	Allocations/Cloud Cost Explorer dashboards, Total cost column percentage
Assets API	Assets dashboard
Cloud Cost API	Cloud Costs Explorer dashboard
External Costs API	External Costs dashboard
Budget API	Budgets dashboard
Cost Events Audit API	Audits dashboard
Predict API	Audits dashboard, Estimated monthly cost impact
Savings API	Savings dashboard
Cluster Right Sizing Recommendation API	Cluster Sizing Recommendations page
Container Request Right Sizing Recommendation API	Request right sizing recommendations page
Abandoned Workloads API	Abandoned Workloads page

API usage

Using the window parameter

Several Kubecost APIs use the window parameter to establish the duration of time Kubecost should sample to provide cost metrics, right-sizing recommendations, or other savings information. The following APIs accept window as parameter:

• Allocation API

• Allocation Trends API

• Assets API

• Cloud Cost API

• Cloud Cost Trends API

• Spec Cost Prediction API

• Events API

• Aggregator Diagnostic APIs

• Cluster Right-Sizing Recommendation API

• Container Request Right-Sizing Recommendation API

Acceptable formats for using window parameter include:

• Common units of time: "15m", "24h", "7d", "48h", etc.

• Relative units of time: "today", "yesterday", "week", "month", "lastweek", "lastmonth"

• Start and end unix timestamps: "1586822400,1586908800"

• Start and end UTC RFC3339 pairs: "2020-04-01T00:00:00Z,2020-04-03T00:00:00Z"

Using the /topline endpoint to summarize costs

Several Kubecost APIs have an additional /topline endpoint which will accept all parameters for corresponding APIs, but will total all costs by category. These categories should mirror cost metric column totals found across various Kubecost UI dashboards. The following APIs accept /topline as an endpoint:

• Allocation API

• Assets API

• Request Right-Sizing Recommendation API

• Abandoned Workloads API

You must still provide a value for window when querying a /topline endpoint.

An example of using /topline to view total costs for Assets data would look like:

GET http://<your-kubecost-address>/model/assets/topline?window=...

When querying for Allocation data, you must add a /summary before topline, and the query for that will look like:

GET http://<your-kubecost-address>/model/allocation/summary/topline?window=...

Using offset and limit parameters to parse payload results

The offset and limit parameters apply to multiple querying APIs to introduce pagination to your results in order to avoid lengthy payloads. Similar to how Kubecost's UI pages display your queried items in limited amounts per page across multiple pages, these two parameters allow your to filter your displayed results. These following APIs accept offset and limit as parameters:

• Allocation API

• Assets API

• Cloud Cost API

Both parameters must be formatted as integers. offset refers to how many line items you'd like to offset. limit controls how many results per page you would like to see. This means when offset is equal to limit, you will be offsetting an entire page of line items. You can multiply your limit value by the number of pages you'd like to offset to obtain an offset value. When using limit, you must also set the parameter accumulate to true when possible in order to receive a single list of line items. The order of items across all pages is determined by total cost, where the largest costs are presented first.

An example of using these parameters in an Allocation query to see results starting from the third page of line items:

GET http://<your-kubecost-address>/model/allocation?window=3d&offset=20&limit=10&accumulate=true