Handbook
The cloud cost handbook
How cloud providers bill and price, and how a team allocates, reports, plans and reduces the cost, in chapters to read in order or look up when a question comes.
Start here
Three pages carry the rest of the handbook: what FinOps is, how a cloud invoice is built, and how tags and labels turn a bill into cost per owner.
- 01 FinOps and cloud cost management What FinOps is, where its principles, phases and capabilities come from, and how a small team practises it without a dedicated function. 9 pages
- 02 How cloud billing works How AWS, Azure and Google Cloud turn usage into an invoice: line items, cost types, credits, billing periods, currency and accounts. 11 pages
- 03 Billing data and standards The cost and usage exports each provider offers, the FOCUS specification that unifies them, and the data quality questions they raise. 12 pages
- 04 Pricing models and commitments On-demand, spot and tiered pricing, each provider's commitment programmes, and how to manage coverage, utilisation and expiry. 12 pages
- 05 What cloud services cost What drives the cost of compute, storage, databases, networking and platform services, and which line items they produce. 15 pages
- 06 Allocation and ownership How every cost reaches an owner through accounts, tags and allocation rules, including shared cost, Kubernetes and unit costs. 13 pages
- 07 Reporting and analysis Cost reports, dimensions and dashboards, the signals worth watching, and how to report cloud cost to engineering, management and finance. 12 pages
- 08 Budgets, forecasts and finance Budgets, alerts and forecasts for cloud spend, and how cloud cost meets accounting: capex and opex, the P&L, accruals and contracts. 11 pages
- 09 Optimisation and savings The loop from a savings opportunity to a verified saving, and the usage and rate levers that reduce cloud cost. 12 pages
- 10 Governance and the operating model The policies, guardrails, roles and review points that keep cloud cost owned and its decisions traceable as a company grows. 11 pages
- 11 FinOps for AI How AI usage is priced and billed, from tokens and GPUs to provider invoices, and how to allocate, budget and reduce it per feature. 12 pages
- 12 Europe: currency, tax and sovereignty Cloud cost from a European seat: euro and pound reporting, VAT on cloud invoices, regional prices, data residency and regulation. 11 pages
- 13 Tooling The providers' native cost consoles, the categories of cost tooling beyond them, and the open-source, spreadsheet and API routes to cost data. 8 pages
- Glossary The terms the handbook uses, defined on one page.
Look at your own bill the way the handbook does
The Free plan lets you connect AWS, Azure or Google Cloud with read-only access and see your own cost by owner.
Permanent Free plan with no time limit