> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Cost Analytics

> Explore cloud spending trends, attribution, anomalies, and forecasts across AWS, GCP, and Azure

Cost Analytics gives you a structured view of where your cloud spend goes and where it is heading. Ask [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) in plain language and get attributed breakdowns, forecasts, and anomaly explanations drawn from live billing data.

For analytics that correlate cost with infrastructure performance and health signals, see [Infrastructure Analytics](/guide/infrastructure/analytics).

## Cost attribution

Alex attributes cloud spend across multiple dimensions simultaneously:

| Dimension | What it shows                                                                   |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Service   | Spend by cloud service — EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, GKE, and more                    |
| Resource  | Instance- or volume-level costs, API call charges, and data transfer fees       |
| Tag       | Costs grouped by environment, team, project, or any tag key you configure       |
| Account   | Per-account totals and cross-account comparisons in multi-account organizations |
| Provider  | Normalized spend across AWS, GCP, and Azure with automatic currency conversion  |

## Anomaly detection

Alex monitors your connected billing streams and surfaces unusual spending patterns automatically.

| Type               | What it detects                                                      |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Spike              | Day-over-day spend increase above your configured threshold          |
| Sustained increase | Gradual upward trend exceeding the historical baseline               |
| New service        | First-time charges from a previously unused service                  |
| Resource explosion | Rapid increase in resource count without a matching deployment event |

Configure alert thresholds and notification channels in [Notifications](/guide/notifications).

## Forecasting

Alex generates cost forecasts from your billing history. Available forecast horizons:

| Horizon      | Signal used                                                      |
| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| End-of-month | Current trajectory extrapolated from month-to-date spend         |
| Quarterly    | Seasonal trend analysis plus growth rate from prior quarters     |
| Annual       | Growth-adjusted projection against your configured budget target |

## Example prompts

```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard current month cloud spending by service
```

```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard compare production vs development costs over the last 90 days
@alex #dashboard multi-cloud spending — AWS vs GCP vs Azure this quarter
```

```text theme={null}
@alex what drove the cost increase last week?
@alex analyze the cost spike on March 3rd and identify the root cause
```

```text theme={null}
@alex forecast cloud spending for the next quarter
@alex compare projected end-of-month spend against quarterly budget
```

```text theme={null}
@alex #report export last quarter's costs by service and tag to CSV
@alex #report monthly cost allocation broken down by team tag
```

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Savings tracking" icon="chart-pie" href="/guide/cost-optimization/savings">
    Measure realized savings from implemented recommendations
  </Card>

  <Card title="Infrastructure Analytics" icon="chart-mixed" href="/guide/infrastructure/analytics">
    Correlate cost signals with performance, health, and utilization
  </Card>

  <Card title="Recommendations" icon="lightbulb" href="/guide/cost-optimization/recommendations">
    Act on cost insights with AI-generated recommendations
  </Card>

  <Card title="Artifacts" icon="chart-bar" href="/guide/artifacts/overview">
    Schedule dashboards and reports to regenerate on your cadence
  </Card>
</CardGroup>