The Cost Explorer page lets you monitor and understand the costs andutilization of resources in your Google Cloud project orApp Hub application. TheCost Explorer provides a current and historical visualization of cost dataand utilization metrics, helping you make informed decisions about optimizationopportunities.

For example, developers and platform administrators in your organization mightuse the Cost Explorer when they want to do the following:

• Determine how costs have increased for the App Hub workloadcymbalin the last two weeks.

• Determine which resources in your Google Cloud project have high cost andlow utilization.

• Identify high-cost Compute Engine managed instance groups (MIGs) that havea low utilization within an application.

Gemini assistance is also available foroptimizing costs and utilization. For more information, seeOptimize costs with Gemini assistance.

If you manage billing accounts or budgets in Cloud Billing, refer to thefollowing information to help you with cost optimization:

• Cloud Billing cost optimization documentation,including information about using FinOps Hub andGemini Cloud Assist in Cloud Billing
• Cloud Billing export to BigQuery lets youperform a more detailed cost analysis in BigQuery or visualizecost data in tools such as [Looker Studio][looker].

Limitations and known issues

• Costs for Compute Engine VMs, Compute Engine MIGs, andGKE clusters don't include network charges for data egress orPersistent Disk usage. These costs are reported separately.

• If you view data for an App Hub application, the followinglimitations apply:

  • You can only view costs for an application if all application resource costsare in the same currency. If an application has resources associatedwith different billing accounts, the billing accounts must all be configuredfor the samecurrency to view application cost data.
  • You can't view or filter resources by location.

Before you begin

The Cost Explorer uses Cloud Billing to retrieve cost data, andCloud Monitoring for utilization metrics. To use the Cost Explorer, youneed access to Monitoring data and configuration information, aswell as the ability to view Cloud Billing data.

1. If you want to view cost data by App Hub application, then verifythat you haveset up App Hub and created yourapplications.

2. If you are only viewing cost data for a project, enable the App Optimize API.in the project.

   1. In the Google Cloud console toolbar, select the project where you want toenable the API.

   2. Enable the App Optimize API.

      Roles required to enable APIs

      To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains theserviceusage.services.enable permission.Learn how to grant roles.

      Enable the API

The Cost Explorer only supports applications managed in a folder configuredfor application management. It doesn't support applications in ahost project or a single-project boundary.

Required roles

Using the Cost Explorer requires different permissions depending on whetheryou are viewing by project or by application.

View by project

To get the permissions that you need to view cost and utilization data for a project, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project:

• Enable APIs:Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin)
• View utilization data:Monitoring Viewer (roles/monitoring.viewer)
• View costs: Viewer (roles/viewer) or a custom role with thebilling.resourceCosts.get permission

If your administrator already granted you theCloud Hub Operator (roles/cloudhub.operator)role, then the Monitoring Viewer permissions are included in that role.

View by application

To get the permissions that you need to view cost and utilization data for an application, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the management project for a folder:

• View utilization data:Monitoring Viewer (roles/monitoring.viewer)
• View data for applications:App Hub Viewer (roles/apphub.viewer)
• View data in a folder:Folder Viewer (roles/resourcemanager.folderViewer)

View the Cost Explorer

To view the Cost Explorer, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to theCost Explorer page:

   Go toCost Explorer

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading isMonitoring.

2. Select the project or application that you want to view:

   • To view data for a project, select a project from the project picker atthe top of the page.

   • To view data for an application, in the toolbar of theGoogle Cloud console, select the management project for a folder.Then, go to the toolbar of the Cost Explorer, andset the view toApplication. If you don't know which project toselect, ask your administrator.

   Note: When you select a project to view in the Cost Explorer, costvalues are only for resource usage in that project. When you select anapplication, cost values are only for resources that are fully used by theselected application.

You can also view cost and utilization data from theOptimization page inCloud Hub. TheOptimization page displays an overviewof the data you see in the Cost Explorer, letting you identify trends at aglance. You can see total cost trends for your selected project or application,the top 5 resources by cost change, and the 5 most underutilized resources. IntheResources by cost and utilization section, you can further explore yourcost and utilization data by clickingView details in Cost Explorer.

Explore your costs and utilization

The Cost Explorer lets you view only cost data, or cost data in tandem withutilization metrics.

You can filter the data presented by adjusting the time-range selector, whereyou can select1 day,7 days,14 days, or30 days.

The Cost Explorer organizes costs logically by product.Cloud Billing groups SKUs for resource usage intoservices.A service in Cloud Billing might be a subset of a Google Cloudproduct or might include SKUs from multiple Google Cloud products. TheseCloud Billing services are unrelated toApp Hub services.

For example, the costs for Compute Engine and GKE productsare equivalent to multiple Cloud Billing services.

TheNetworking service includes SKUs for many networkingproducts such as Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud NAT, Cloud VPN,Private Service Connect, and Performance Dashboard. TheCost Explorer categorizes these costs by product, but Cloud Billingonly provides a single Networking service and doesn't have defined servicesfor each networking product.

You can search the list ofGoogle Cloud SKUs to learn more abouthow SKUs are categorized in Cloud Billing.

Analyze by cost

TheCost summary for selected scope section of the Cost Explorerdisplays data about the total cost, total cost change, and total cost changeby resource.

The total cost is based on usage in the selected project or applicationbased on your contract prices, before anycommitted-use discounts (CUDs)or other credits are applied. For an application, the total cost includes allresources that are fully used by the application. This total cost doesn'tinclude costs for resources that are shared across applications.

The total cost table breaks down costs for supported products and resources.Unsupported products are classified asOther in theProduct column andunsupported resources are classified asOther in theResource Typecolumn. For a list of supported resources, seeSupported products.

Analyze by cost and utilization

For supported Google Cloud products, you can further explore costs inrelation to resources in theExplore analyzed resources section.

This section lets you select a metric that aggregates cost and utilization,presenting a treemap that organizes cost by size, and utilization by color.For example, this section might be helpful in identifying resources that costthe most, while also having low CPU utilization in the last 30 days.

Supported products

TheProduct filter in the Cost Explorer lists products that areintegrated with the Cost Explorer.

The following table lists supported products with resource-level cost data.

What's next

• Explore opportunities for cost savings and optimization inFinOps hub.
• Perform in-depth cost analysis withCloud Billing reports.
• Learn cost optimization best practices in the documentGoogle Cloud Architecture Framework: Cost optimization.