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A shared Cloud SQL database that costs 10K/monthrarelysplitsevenlyacrosstheteamsthatuseit.Insteadofaflat50/50guess,Costoryallocates‘10K/month rarely splits evenly across the teams that use it. Instead of a flat 50/50 guess, Costory allocates `7Kto Team A and$3K` to Team B based on actual database usage from Datadog. Connect any usage metric, and Costory splits the cost proportionally, with no manual percentages to maintain.
Pie chart showing database cost split proportionally across three teams based on usage

Allocate a shared database cost to the teams using it, based on actual usage metrics

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Key terms

  • Shared cost allocation: The process of distributing a shared infrastructure cost across the teams or services that consume it, proportionally based on usage.
  • Usage metric: An external measurement (e.g., database size per schema, CPU time per user, API calls per team) used to determine each team’s share of a shared cost.
  • Virtual dimension: A rule-based cost grouping. Shared cost allocation is configured as a special type of virtual dimension rule. See Dimensions.
See the Glossary for a full list of terms.

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Supported metric sources

Costory can use usage metrics from several data sources to drive proportional cost allocation.

Datadog

Datadog CI Visibility

BigQuery

Tsuga

AWS CloudWatch

S3 metrics

Amplitude

Google Sheets

Snowflake

Custom metrics

Connect your metric source from Integrations > + Add integration > External metric. See Metrics Correlation, then reference it in a rule.

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How it works

1

Connect a usage metric source

Go to Integrations, click + Add integration, then under External metric connect a source from the grid above. See Metrics Correlation for details.
2

Create or edit a virtual dimension

Open the virtual dimension where you want to add shared cost allocation, for example Team. See Dimensions if you haven’t created one yet.
3

Add a metric-based rule

Select the usage metric you connected. Costory will use the metric’s values to determine each team’s proportional share of the cost.
4

Map metric dimensions to teams

Tell Costory how metric labels correspond to team names. Three mapping types are available (see below).
5

Apply

Costory reprocesses your data. The shared cost is split proportionally and appears in Explorer grouped by team.

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Mapping metric labels to teams

When a usage metric has dimension labels (e.g., a schema label per database schema), you need to map those labels to the team names in your virtual dimension.

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Common allocation patterns

Shared cost allocation works well for:
  • Shared databases (Cloud SQL, RDS, Aurora), split by schema size, query count, or connection time per team
  • Network and egress costs, split by traffic volume per namespace or service
  • Shared Kubernetes clusters, split by CPU or memory usage per namespace. See EKS cost allocation for a full example.
  • Third-party API costs, split by API call count per team. See Reallocate API Costs for a walkthrough.
  • Support and licensing fees, split proportionally based on each team’s share of total spend

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Automate reporting

Once costs are allocated, you can automate weekly reports per team via Cost Reports. Each team sees their share of shared infrastructure alongside their direct costs, all in one place.
For a step-by-step walkthrough, see Allocate a shared Cloud SQL database.

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Next Steps

Dimensions

Build imported and rule-based dimensions

Allocate a Shared Database

Step-by-step: split a Cloud SQL bill across teams

Reallocate API Costs

Split shared API costs using an external usage metric

Metrics Correlation

Connect any External metric source
Last modified on September 8, 2026