Cost Metrics

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

AWS

AWS Cost Explorer Metric / Field	Costory Equivalent	Adjustments	Meaning
Net Unblended Cost	Cost (Billed Cost)	Taxes excluded	Matches the amount on your AWS invoice after all applied discounts and credits.
Net Amortized Cost	Effective Cost	Taxes excluded	Same as billed cost but with upfront RI/Savings Plan fees spread evenly across the covered period.
(No AWS equivalent)	List Cost	Taxes excluded	Cost calculated from AWS public list prices × usage quantity. Ignores all EDP, RI, and Savings Plan discounts.
(No AWS equivalent)	Contracted Cost	Taxes excluded	Cost under your negotiated EDP or special pricing, excluding all Savings Plan discounts and credits.

GCP

GCP Billing Field	Costory Equivalent	Adjustments	Meaning
Cost including all credits and CUD	Cost (Billed Cost)	Taxes excluded	Total cost including all credits (promotions, SUD, CUD, reseller margin). Matches your GCP invoice.
Cost including all credits and CUD	Effective Cost	Taxes excluded	Same as billed cost. GCP does not separate amortized vs non-amortized costs.
cost_at_list	List Cost	Taxes excluded	Cost calculated from GCP public list prices. Only applies to regular cost rows, not credits.
(No GCP equivalent)	Contracted Cost	Taxes excluded	Cost excluding promotions, SUD, subscription benefits, reseller margin, and CUD credits. Commitment costs are also excluded.

Azure

Azure Cost Management Field	Costory Equivalent	Adjustments	Meaning
Actual Cost (costInUsd)	Cost (Billed Cost)	Taxes excluded	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.

Datadog

Datadog Billing Field	Costory Equivalent	Adjustments	Meaning
billed_cost	Cost (Billed Cost)	None	The amount billed by Datadog for the usage period.
effective_cost	Effective Cost	None	Same as billed costs, but your commitments that can be amortized are spread out per day based on the actual usage
billed_cost	List Cost	None	Same as billed cost. Datadog does not provide separate list pricing.
billed_cost	Contracted Cost	None	Same as billed cost. Datadog does not distinguish contracted vs standard pricing.

Get Started

Setup

Understand

Tag & Allocate

Share

Teams

Technical Documentation

Glossary

Cost Metrics

Cost Metrics

AWS

GCP

Azure

Datadog

​Cost Metrics

​AWS

​GCP

​Azure

​Datadog

Cost Metrics

AWS

GCP

Azure

Datadog