Getting Started with Cloud Cost

Overview

This guide introduces AppStatus Cloud Cost and covers:

• Spend broken down by service, cluster and workload
• Kubernetes cost derived from real resource consumption
• Cost shown next to the traffic it serves
• Threshold alerting on rate of change
• Read-only access to connected cloud accounts

What is Cloud Cost in AppStatus?

Cloud Cost brings spend into the same place as your performance data. Instead of a bill in one tool and latency in another, you see what a workload costs beside how much traffic it actually serves.

That pairing changes which questions you can answer. Total spend growing alongside traffic is not waste; spend growing while traffic is flat is a configuration change, and the least-used workload is more often the problem than the most expensive one.

Key capabilities:

• Cost attribution by service, cluster and workload
• Kubernetes cost derived from actual consumption
• Cost-per-request alongside absolute spend
• Change-rate thresholds rather than monthly-total alerts
• Read-only connections — nothing here needs write access

What you will see

What the cost breakdown looks like

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Troubleshooting

Operational Guidance

• Cost per request is more useful than total spend — growth is not the same as waste.
• The most expensive workload is not always the problem; the least-used one usually is.
• A spend jump with flat traffic means a config change, not demand.

Step-by-Step Setup

Cost data follows your cloud connections, so start there. The setup that gives this page its value is tagging — attribution can only be as sharp as the tags your workloads carry.

1. 1

   Connect your cloud accounts

   Connect each account in Cloud Integrations with read-only access. Nothing about cost collection requires permission to change anything.

   WhereCloud Integrations → Add connection
2. 2

   Confirm cost data arrives

   Open Cloud Cost and confirm spend appears broken down by service. Providers publish billing data on their own schedule, so the most recent days can lag.

   WhereCloud Cost → Overview
3. 3

   Tag workloads consistently

   Attribution follows your tags. Workloads without consistent tags collapse into one bucket, so tag first — the breakdown sharpens immediately afterwards.

   WhereYour deployment manifests

   Tip

   This is the difference between "cloud costs $4,000" and knowing which workload to fix.

4. 4

   Read cost against traffic

   Open the breakdown and compare each workload against the requests it serves. The most expensive workload is not usually the problem; the least-used one often is.

   WhereCloud Cost → Breakdown
5. 5

   Alert on change, not total

   Set a threshold on rate of change rather than the monthly total. Growth that tracks traffic is not waste; a jump with flat traffic is a configuration change worth catching the same week.

   WhereCloud Cost → Thresholds

Configuration Options

Every option you can set, what each choice means, and what to pick. Use this as a reference while you fill in the form.

Feature Reference

Every feature, where to find it in the app, and what it does. Use this when you know what you want to do but not where it lives.

Next Steps

Continue building your monitoring stack: