You can now run Explorer queries over the public HTTP API. Authenticate with a bearer token and call POST /queries/run with the same series body the app and Costory MCP use: cost, usage, metrics, formulas, budgets, CEL filters, group-bys, date presets, and period comparison.Companion endpoints list the dimensions and metric ids your queries can reference. A diff-tree endpoint returns a rollup of what moved between two periods.See the Query Costs API to get started.
Since mid July, almost half of our customers use Costory through the Costory MCP. We also know what holds the other half back: adding a new MCP server to Claude raises fair questions about token overhead and setup effort.So we brought the MCP into the app. The same tools and skills now power a chat directly in Costory:
New customers can try the MCP capabilities without installing anything.
When the app is not the best fit for a task, such as a complex analysis or a topic where you do not know where to start, the chat picks it up. This lets us ship smarter features without building a new screen for each one.
Costory MCP and skills, now inside the app
We also cleaned up the tools themselves. Over time the catalog drifted from the original 10 tools to more than 30, so we simplified the schemas and now reuse the same schema across similar tools. Your MCP client loads fewer tokens for the same capabilities.Finally, the costory-plugin repository has new FinOps skills and more examples of what you can do with the Costory FinOps MCP.
FinOps breaks when billing lives in one tool and the signal that explains it lives in another… This week we focused on simplifying those integrations !
You can now connect Costory to your Tsuga infrastructure to:
Ingest Tsuga costs: get detailed cost breakdowns per API key, service and environment for your Tsuga fees.
Pull metrics from Tsuga to Costory to reallocate shared costs based on an external metric (e.g., cost per team for a shared API, cost per user for a shared database).
Pull metrics from Tsuga to Costory to calculate marginal cost.
Let our AI investigation agent investigate a cost change by searching and querying Tsuga metrics.
What is Tsuga? Tsuga is an observability platform that runs on your cloud infrastructure, providing trace, APM, logging, and infrastructure monitoring.
Watch a quick Tsuga-to-Costory connector walkthrough
Using Costory MCP, create a dashboard for S3 bucket analyses (resource_id analyses) daily trend last 45 days, find interesting cost drivers, and a reallocated-cost widget using Tsuga monitoring_events — (events by api_key_id / total events) * bucket cost, formula (b/c)*a.
Query easily your BigQuery dataset for external metrics:
We simplified the process to set up BigQuery Metrics: you no longer need to create a data source per table. Create an integration once per project, then access any table in the project directly from Advanced Explorer.This will also allow our AI investigation agent to investigate a cost change by searching and querying BigQuery metrics easily !
See BigQuery integration and cost allocation in action
Explorer and dashboards: Both now keep a history of their last 50 states, so you can revert filters, charts, and layout without starting over. Full Dashboard Versioning is in progress and coming soon.
With the increased number of tools, tool description were no longer a good place to describe the tool and the workflow using it: We added a new tool get_skill in the MCP explaining the workflows we advise to use with our MCP:
Virtual Dimension Skill: two workflow options to create a virtual dimension.
Dashboard Skill: how to create an impactful dashboard.
See the FinOps MCP for setup and the full tool reference.
Many FinOps frameworks have a concept of , but writing the rules was never the hard part. The hard part is discovery: which field separates your spend, what values exist, and where they currently land. Until now that meant digging through Explorer first, then coming back to encode the rules separately. We moved that discovery loop into the MCP so it happens in one session.The Costory FinOps MCP now exposes a set of tools built to streamline the discovery loop, so you can explore and define an allocation in one chat:
Find interesting dimensions: semantic search over your actual data. Query “ML” to surface every related dimension value, including LLM and ML-adjacent service names you wouldn’t catch on a literal string match.
Suggest additional split dimensions: for a given service, returns candidate fields to split on, each ranked by how much of the spend it explains. Useful when you don’t know the right dimension up front.
Draft virtual dimension: creates a draft from your rules and returns a preview of the resulting allocation over the past 30 days, before anything is published.
Rule overlap matrix: rule order is significant, and reordering can silently change what each rule catches. This returns a matrix of cost overlap between rules so you can verify ordering deterministically.
When the split is right, the assistant saves it as a virtual dimension draft and publishes only on your approval. Edits stay on the draft, so production is unchanged until you confirm. On publish, Costory reprocesses your history and the dimension appears across Explorer, dashboards, alerts, and reports. See Dimensions for the full workflow.
Draft a virtual dimension from your MCP client and preview the allocation before publishing
When exposing Costory to LLMs via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), we hit an architectural wall: our legacy alert forms relied heavily on implicit UI state. To support LLMs, we needed to rebuild the alerting backend around explicit formulas.We rebuilt alerting around explicit formulas so both users and AI agents can see exactly how each alert is evaluated. Alerts v3 is a pure, formula-based engine built on top of our Advanced Explorer, bringing absolute predictability and rock-solid historical backtesting to cost alerting.
Alerts list showing active cost and budget alerts
You can now:
Backtest alerts against historical data before enabling them.
Use formulas for absolute cost, relative changes, week-over-week changes, and rolling windows.
Create grouped alerts by adding a groupBy to the base query, so one alert can evaluate every team, project, service, or environment independently.
Reduce noise by batching fired groups into one consolidated notification.
Create an alert on the 7-day relative change of my Claude costs. Only notify me if the absolute change is above $1000 and the relative change is above 10%.
You can now add tags to dashboards and bulk edit them from the View all dashboards page, making it easier to group dashboards by team, workflow, or FinOps process.
You can now choose the color palette for each chart from four options, so dashboard visuals stay readable and consistent with the story you want to tell.
Query the same cost data you see in Costory from your own BigQuery project—use it in Looker, notebooks, or custom SQL without re-building filters by hand.On any dashboard widget, click Copy SQL query to copy the SQL for that view. An Organization Admin must grant your service account or user read access to the export table under Integrations > Destinations.
Costory v3: a simpler way to investigate cloud costs
Two years ago, we built Costory to help you understand and manage cloud costs. Since then, we’ve spoken with many of you about how you use the platform every day.One theme came up often: the product had accumulated too many ways to do the same things.At the same time, LLMs are changing how teams work with their tools. Costory v3 is designed to help you move faster: investigate cost changes, capture context, and turn those investigations into reusable workflows through MCP, APIs, reports, and alerts.So we rebuilt the Costory experience around six core areas you rely on most.
Explorer: Your entrypoint for investigating cost changes.
Dashboards: Save investigations, revisit them later, and annotate them with events.
Dimensions: Standardize and group cost labels so every team can understand its costs.
Events: Add context to cost changes and connect events directly to your analysis.
Reports: Manage scheduled reports, scheduled dashboards, and cost digest analysis in one place. (Cost digests are coming later this month).
Alerts: Catch unexpected cost increases using fixed thresholds and relative thresholds.
The search was also improved to help you explore faster: dashboards, dimensions, events and reports.
For existing users, the transition is already complete. We migrated your views and redirected your existing URLs to the new layout.
Tell us what still feels harder than before so we can improve it.
We now support Snowflake account usage and billing data in Costory. Create a Snowflake integration on Integrations with key-pair authentication, then add a Snowflake billing datasource that reuses that integration. Terraform is not available for this datasource yet (connect via the Costory UI).See the Snowflake billing setup guide.
Plot Budgets Alongside Actual Cost in the Explorer
You can now plot budgets as an area chart directly in Explorer. Open the metric selector, switch to the budget tab, and pick any budget to visualize its monthly target as a shaded area alongside your actual cost data.Use it to spot budget overruns as they happen: overlay your team’s monthly budget on top of cumulated daily spend to see whether you’re on track mid-month, or compare budget lines across squads to identify which teams are consistently over or under target. Click Add related cost to automatically add a cost series scoped to the budget’s definition, with filters and group-by pre-filled so actual spend aligns with budget lines.
Cloud cost alerts now support relative thresholds alongside absolute caps. Instead of only firing when spend crosses a fixed amount, you can configure alerts that trigger when costs increase or decrease by more than a set amount or percentage compared to the previous day, week, or month.Each threshold row has its own mode, so you can mix absolute and relative rules on the same alert. For example, get an informational notification when weekly spend increases by more than 10%, and escalate to a warning if it exceeds a hard dollar cap.Four threshold modes are available: is above, is under, increases by more than, and decreases by more than. For the relative modes, choose between an absolute delta (USD) or percentage change.
You can now import Elastic Cloud organization billing and instance costs to Costory using an Organization API key and Organization ID. Data is normalized into so you can explore Elastic spend next to AWS, GCP, Azure, and other billing datasources.See the new Elastic Cloud billing setup guide for step-by-step instructions.
You can now import custom usage metrics directly from AWS CloudWatch into Costory. Create an AWS CloudWatch integration, paste your CloudWatch Insights query (for example S3 BucketSizeBytes, HTTP request counts, CPU utilization, or SQS queue depth), and Costory will keep these metrics in sync alongside your billing data. This makes it easier to build unit economics like cost per request, cost per active user, or cost per GB stored using real infrastructure signals.See the new AWS CloudWatch usage metrics setup guide for step-by-step instructions and example queries.
A single cost view rarely works for an entire organization. Your backend squad needs scoped to their services, while finance needs Billed Cost across everything. Teams let you configure those defaults once so each group lands on the right numbers without manual filtering. Learn more in Teams.
When a virtual dimension finishes computing and appears in the explorer, you get a notification in the top-right corner. The same applies to other long-running tasks in Costory.
New filling options make it easier to configure budgets. Set monthly allocations manually, distribute evenly across the year, or use historical spend as a baseline — then adjust from there.
Duplicate any widget on a dashboard with a single click. The copy inherits all configuration — filters, groupings, and layout — so you can quickly create variations without starting from scratch.
Get started faster with pre-built dashboard templates.Instead of building from scratch, pick a template that matches your use case and customize from there — widgets, filters, and layouts are all pre-configured and fully editable.
You can now schedule reports directly from Explorer.
Build a visualization with custom aggregations, formulas, and comparisons, then set it to deliver automatically on your preferred cadence.We also introduced a new Reports tab inside the library, letting you find all your scheduled email and slack reports alongside existing views and dashboards.
Stay ahead of cost anomalies with a redesigned alerts system supporting multiple alert types and notification channels:
Cost Alerts monitor actual spending against custom thresholds — get notified when costs spike or drop unexpectedly
Budget Alerts track spend against allocated budgets with percentage-based triggers and automatic owner notifications
Multi-threshold severity levels (Info, Warning, Alert) with daily, weekly, or monthly evaluation periods
Deliver alerts directly to Slack channels or email recipients across your organization. Snooze alerts when needed, review historical triggers, and use pre-configured templates to get started quickly.Weekly cumulative sums let you track running totals over the current week, so you can catch budget overruns before the month closes.
Dashboards can now be edited in-line in Explorer, allowing you to change titles, resize tiles, and add and delete widgets with fewer clicks. Further changes:
Creating a dashboard widget no longer requires saving a view
Dashboards now support Text widgets for additional context
Templates allowing you to get started faster than ever
Explorer shows where your cloud spend goes and adds multiple metrics, formulas, anomaly drill-downs, and reusable views.
Multiple Metrics: Plot cost alongside usage metrics, business KPIs, or custom data on the same chart. Each metric gets its own axis.
Ad-hoc Formulas: Create calculated fields like cost-per-user or cost-per-request. Combine any metrics with arithmetic operations.
Aggregations: Go beyond sum. Use average, max, or min to analyze your data the way you need.
Flexible Comparison: Enable comparison mode to see a waterfall chart breaking down exactly what changed between two time periods. Sort by absolute or percentage change.Undo/Redo — Cmd+Z to undo, Cmd+Shift+Z to redo. Explore freely without losing your work.Time Navigation — Arrow buttons slide your view backward or forward by one period. Last month becomes the month before with a single click.
Send digests and alerts directly to Teams channels alongside Slack.Keep your entire organization informed about cost changes and anomalies in the collaboration tools they already use.
Step-by-step setup flows for AWS and Azure with copy-paste commands and real-time validation. Our guided wizards walk you through creating cost exports and configuring permissions, with instant feedback to ensure everything is set up correctly.For AWS, you can now set up billing exports using a one-click CloudFormation stack. The template creates the CUR 2.0 export and configures the IAM role with the required permissions automatically.
Digests are now fully automated — configure once and Costory generates your cost reports on schedule with background processing. Each digest includes markdown-rendered analysis with auto-generated charts, organized in a 5-step config modal for quick setup.
Correlate product usage with cloud costs. Connect your Amplitude project to bring Daily Active Users into Costory, then visualize usage trends alongside infrastructure spend. Supports both US and EU data regions with 12 months of historical data synced automatically.
Press Cmd/Ctrl+K from anywhere to open Spotlight and navigate directly to your most-used views and features. Start typing to search across dashboards, saved views, metrics and more. Arrow keys navigate, Enter opens, Escape closes.Spotlight adapts to your usage — you’ll see your recent dashboards, recently accessed views, and the most popular views across your team from the last 30 days. Community templates give you ready-to-use starting points for common analyses.
Costory AI got a major upgrade to how it understands and navigates your cost data. Improved vocabulary and column-naming awareness means Costory AI now interprets dimensions, labels, and groupings more accurately — fewer false leads, more relevant breakdowns.Under the hood, heavy columns are now tokenized for faster processing, and a new prompt architecture gives Costory AI better guidance on when to drill deeper versus when to surface results. Combined with the group-by quality scoring introduced in November, Costory AI’s investigations are sharper and faster than ever.
Organization creation is now fully automated during sign-up — no manual steps required. The onboarding flow also supports organization hierarchies for teams managing parent and child accounts, with smarter defaults and improved invite handling.
Costory AI now generates full markdown for each node with dynamic chart generation. After identifying contributing factors for a cost spike, Costory AI picks the most relevant dimension to visualize the underlying cost drivers at a glance.The digest modal got a visual refresh — cleaner layout, easier navigation, and quick toggles to show or hide charts while reading.Interactive Feedback and Continuity — provide feedback to Costory AI and specify how to update an existing report. Costory AI regenerates each node according to your specifications, and all previous versions are saved so you can pick up where you left off.
Under the Hood: Costory AI Becomes your FinOps Agent
Costory AI evolved from a fixed analysis pipeline into an autonomous AI agent powered by Gemini. Instead of following predetermined steps, Costory AI now reasons about your data — deciding which dimensions to investigate, which statistical tests to run, and how to present findings.Key changes under the hood:
Tool-based architecture — Costory AI has its own toolbox: assess group-by quality, fetch timeseries, run contributing factor analysis, and pull historical cost context
Statistical dimension selection — a concentration index scores each dimension before Costory AI drills in, so analysis focuses on what actually explains cost changes
Parallel data fetching — timeseries queries now run concurrently, cutting investigation time significantly
Events & knowledge retrieval — Costory AI can now pull events and organizational knowledge directly into its analysis, cross-referencing deployments, incidents, and internal context for richer explanations
The library is now keyboard-first — navigate everything with Cmd/Ctrl+K, arrow keys, and shortcuts. Consistent color schemes across all charts make it easier to track dimensions visually.The query builder has been updated with a cleaner interface, and you can now filter dashboards by view to focus on the data that matters most.Inline editing lets you modify dashboards without leaving the page, and you can create new views directly from within dashboards. Change the time period on any dashboard without leaving the page, and create saved views straight from the dashboard modal.
All charts now use a consistent color palette with full hex color support, making it easier to track dimensions visually across views and dashboards. The sign-up page is also now fully optimized for mobile.
A completely overhauled onboarding flow with automated organization creation, smarter defaults (start date now defaults to 3 months ago), and a redesigned sign-up page optimized for mobile. Setup wizards now link directly to the relevant documentation.
Events Correlations in the Digest — correlated events now appear for every cost change and trend, helping you identify root causes and share findings with your organization.Also new: GBP currency support and advanced AWS cost metrics including Unblended, Net Unblended, Amortized, and Net Amortized cost views. The “Others” category in the explorer now shows up to 200 items for deeper analysis.
Costory AI now analyzes your spending and overlays trends directly on charts, helping you distinguish signal from noise. In digests, trend charts with event markers let you correlate changes with deployments, incidents, or infrastructure updates.PNG exports now include event markers with labels and descriptions, rendered with smart positioning — making exported charts presentation-ready with full context.Better chart controls — interactive legends let you highlight series on hover and hide/show specific data by clicking. Tooltips sort values in descending order for quick identification of top contributors.
Digests redesigned from the ground up — a cleaner modal with badge-based organization. Collapse and expand sections as you review, with “Expand All” / “Collapse All” for quick navigation. Compare periods side by side with current month in solid blue and previous in dashed gray, with percentage changes in tooltips.
Datadog billing integration — track observability costs alongside cloud infrastructure with a setup wizard supporting both US and EU instances.Events in saved views — bookmark deployments, incidents, and releases to have them automatically appear on relevant dashboards. Event filters now save with your views.
When Costory detects unusual spending, Costory AI automatically analyzes the spike and identifies contributing factors — within minutes. The analysis appears directly in your digest and respects your exclusion filters, so you only see what matters.
The redesigned group by widget uses color-coded pills for different dimension categories (Infrastructure, Applications, etc.). Search finds dimensions by their actual values, not just names — searching “prod” finds dimensions containing “production” values. Full keyboard navigation makes exploration fast.Events from anywhere — create events via public API from CI/CD pipelines, monitoring tools, or ticketing systems. Track AWS price changes, Reserved Instance purchases, and Savings Plan commitments automatically. GitHub integration monitors pull request merges, repository creation, and releases.
Costory AI now analyzes your data and suggests the most relevant dimensions to group by. The suggested axes feature scores dimensions by impact, showing which ones have the highest explanatory power. A sparkle icon marks suggestions, and you can auto-select them for instant insights.
Confluent Cloud billing with automated BigQuery sync and historical data import. Datadog metrics got centralized configuration with faster previews. Custom BigQuery mappings now support 40+ fields.Split costs by actual usage — allocate shared costs based on telemetry from Datadog, CSV, Google Sheets, AWS, or CI visibility metrics. Map cost centers to usage metrics with visual previews showing top consumers over time.
Track Costs Alongside Deployments, Incidents, and Releases
Track deployments, incidents, and releases directly on your cost charts. Events appear as visual markers on timelines, letting you instantly correlate cost spikes with real-world changes. Organize events into BUSINESS, TECHNICAL, and PROVIDER categories with reusable labels across your organization.
Engineering teams shouldn’t have to dig through dashboards every month to figure out what changed. The Costory Digest does the work for you — it automatically analyzes your cloud costs, identifies the biggest movers, and delivers a clear summary straight to Slack on your schedule.
Configurable scope — choose the time period, group-by dimensions, and filters to match what matters to your team
Interactive charts with trend lines that highlight cost movements at a glance
“Others” rollup so smaller line items don’t clutter the picture
Drawer view for quick exploration without leaving your workflow
Scheduled delivery to Slack so your Monday morning standups always start with the full picture
