A report subscription delivers a saved cost report by email on a fixed schedule instead of waiting for someone to open it. It changes not the figures but their reach: people who never look at the console, such as the managing director or the bookkeeper, still see cloud cost every week or month. That raises three questions a report in the console does not have. What exactly arrives: an image, a file or a link? How old is the figure when it is read? And who sees it once the email is forwarded?
How it works
A subscription has four parts: the report, the schedule, the recipients and the format. The cost report fixes period, cost basis and filters; a relative period such as "last month" shows the matching month on every delivery, a fixed one always the same. The format decides freshness and access:
| Format | Figures as of | Who can see them |
|---|---|---|
| Image or PDF in the email | when it was generated | anyone who has the email |
| Link to the view in the console | when it is opened | only those with rights on the scope |
| Link to a file | when it was generated | anyone with the link until it expires |
Azure
In cost analysis the feature is called Subscribe, and Microsoft calls the entries scheduled alerts. You subscribe to a chart view. From built-in views such as Accumulated costs the email shows the currency as USD; anyone who needs a different date range, currency or amortisation saves a private or shared view first. One email goes to up to 20 recipients; for more, Microsoft recommends a distribution list. Optionally it carries an unauthenticated CSV download link, meant for recipients without access; anyone who receives the email then has access to the data. You choose a start, an end at most one year ahead and a frequency, including After invoice finalized for the closed month, which requires the view to show the previous month. Emails go out at 8:00 local time by default, in fact at a fixed UTC time without daylight saving adjustment. Before each send Azure checks the creator's permissions. Subscribe is unavailable for management groups and table views. The image rests on at most 200,000 rows, the CSV file on at most 15,000 records.
AWS
Dashboards in the Billing and Cost Management console can be sent as a scheduled report, daily, weekly or monthly at a UTC time, as the whole dashboard or one widget; a Managed Dashboard only as a copy. AWS recomputes relative periods on every delivery, and changes to the dashboard flow into later deliveries. The email holds a link to a password-protected PDF and the password in its body; the link is valid for 15 days, and nobody needs AWS permissions to open it. Recipients verify their address once; for a distribution list, one member with console access is enough. An account can hold 100 scheduled reports, each running for at most three years. Delivery runs through AWS User Notifications; anyone allowed to read notification events there can get the link and password without rights on the cost data. The Cost Explorer report pages name saving, bookmarks and CSV download, not delivery.
There are also AWS Budgets reports: daily, weekly or monthly, on up to 50 budgets to up to 50 email addresses, delivered at about 0:00 UTC, up to 50 reports per account. On 2026-10-16 the AWS pricing page put each report delivered at USD 0.01, whatever the number of recipients, with no region named.
Google Cloud
For Cloud Billing reports Google documents saving, sharing by URL and CSV download, not scheduled delivery. Budgets send email only when a threshold is reached, and send the current status to a program through Pub/Sub several times a day; those are alerts and machine messages, not reports for readers (budget alerts and thresholds). A scheduled report is built in Data Studio, as Looker Studio is now called, on the BigQuery export: the email carries the PDF as an attachment and a link to the report, and shows an inline preview only with Data Studio Pro. Numbers, currencies and dates in a delivery always appear in US English format. Without Data Studio Pro each report allows one schedule with at most one delivery a day; with Pro up to 200 schedules and hourly delivery. Each schedule takes at most 50 recipients, always including its creator. The schedule follows the operating system's time zone and runs with the permissions of whoever saved it last.
What it means for your cost
Schedule and recipients follow the reader, not the tool. Which question belongs to which rhythm is covered in reporting cadence; for delivery:
| Reader | Schedule | Content | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering team | weekly | the team's cost by service, effective | link, the team has console access |
| Managing director | monthly after the invoice | total against budget, a few drivers | PDF or image |
| Finance | monthly after the invoice | billed cost per invoice | PDF and file, better the export |
A figure in an attachment does not age with the data. A monthly report on the 2nd shows a month that can still change until finalisation (data freshness in cost reports), so every delivery states its data cut-off, and the delivery for the close waits for the invoice, as After invoice finalized does on Azure. The monthly email is also the basis of the monthly review (Monthly cloud cost review: agenda and templates).
Setting up a subscription is also an access decision. An attachment, a link without sign-in or a password in the body make the email the access control, and distribution lists decide who reads cost per team or customer. Which figures go to whom is the company's decision; where tags or resource names identify people, the question belongs with whoever handles data protection. Because Azure and Data Studio run under one person's permissions, every subscription belongs to a role, not a name. Where people get no standing permissions, Microsoft names a service principal through the Scheduled Actions API.
Where it goes wrong
- The subscription expires. Symptom: the monthly email stops after a year. Cause: on Azure the end date lies at most one year ahead and has to be extended.
- The creator loses rights. Symptom: after a role change no report arrives. Cause: Azure checks the creator's permissions, and Data Studio runs with those of the last person who saved the schedule.
- Current month instead of last month. Symptom: the email after the invoice shows only the first few days. Cause: the view looks at the current month.
- Dollars instead of euros. Symptom: a subscription on a built-in Azure view shows USD. Cause: built-in views send in USD; a saved view with its currency fixes it.
- Truncated data. Symptom: the image stops mid-month, the CSV file holds only a few days. Cause: the limits of 200,000 rows and 15,000 records; large scopes belong in an export.
- Forwarded cost. Symptom: cost per customer reaches outsiders. Cause: an unauthenticated CSV link or a password in the email; whoever has the email has the data.
Sources
Read on 2026-10-16. Microsoft save, share and subscribe to views; AWS scheduling email delivery of dashboard reports, creating a scheduled report, scheduled report emails, getting started with dashboards, quotas and restrictions, Cost Explorer reports, AWS Budgets reports, creating a budget report and AWS Budgets pricing; Google Cloud Cloud Billing reports, budgets and budget alerts, programmatic budget notifications and scheduling report delivery in Data Studio.