Cost (Billed Cost): The amount you actually pay at the end of the month, after all discounts and credits have been applied.
Effective Cost: The billed cost with upfront fees for Savings Plans and Reserved Instances spread (amortized) evenly across the commitment period, instead of being charged as a lump sum. This gives you a smoother, more representative view of daily costs.
List Cost: The cost calculated from public on-demand prices, what you would have paid without any negotiated discounts or commitments. Use this as a benchmark to measure how much you’re saving compared to standard pricing.
Contracted Cost: The cost under your negotiated or special pricing, excluding all discounts and credits. This isolates the effect of actual usage changes from discount movements.
We advise to track Contracted Cost for your engineering team since it only
depends on actual usage. Tracking Billed Cost can be misleading because of
Savings Plan reassignments and credits you receive during the year.
Learn why Contracted Cost is the right metric for engineering teams →
Matches the amount on your Azure invoice. Uses the “actual” cost export.
Amortized Cost (costInUsd)
Effective Cost
Taxes excluded
Same as billed cost but with upfront reservation and savings plan fees spread evenly across the covered period. Uses the “amortized” cost export.
PayG Cost (paygCostInUsd)
List Cost
Taxes excluded
Cost calculated from Azure pay-as-you-go rates before any discounts.
Actual Cost (costInUsd)
Contracted Cost
Taxes excluded
Same as billed cost. Azure does not provide a separate contracted rate equivalent.
For Azure, Contracted Cost is identical to Billed Cost because Azure does not expose a separate contracted or negotiated rate in its billing exports. This means the Contracted Cost advantage (isolating usage changes from discount movements) does not currently apply to Azure.
