Glossary

The cloud cost and CloudYali terms these docs use, A to Z. Each term links to the page that covers it.

ABCDEFIMNORSTU

A

Admin API key

An Anthropic or OpenAI key that can read and manage the whole organization. CloudYali needs one to read cost and usage, and calls only read endpoints. See Permissions by provider.

Amortized cost

Cost with each commitment fee spread across the period it covers. In CloudYali, only the Commitments views use amortized commitment cost. See Cost types.

Azure reservation

An Azure commitment to a type of resource, such as a virtual machine size, for one or three years, in exchange for a lower price. See Commitments.

B

Billing export

Google Cloud's export of detailed usage cost to a BigQuery dataset. CloudYali reads Google Cloud cost from it. See Google Cloud billing export.

Budget

A monthly, quarterly or yearly spending limit on one provider's costs, optionally narrowed to some accounts, regions, services or tags. See Budgets.

C

Cash basis

Counting each charge on the day the provider bills it, so a commitment's upfront or monthly fee appears on one day. CloudYali's cost figures are on a cash basis. See Cost types.

Commitment coverage

The share of commitment-eligible usage that a Reserved Instance, Savings Plan, Azure reservation or Google Cloud committed use discount covered: covered usage ÷ eligible usage, at on-demand prices. See Commitments.

Commitment discount

A lower price for agreeing to use a fixed amount of cloud capacity, or to spend a fixed amount per hour, for one or three years. You pay for the commitment whether you use it or not. See Commitments.

Commitment utilization

The share of the commitment you paid for that usage consumed: used commitment ÷ total commitment. See Commitments.

Committed use discount (CUD)

A Google Cloud commitment to an amount of resources or spend for one or three years, in exchange for a lower price. See Commitments.

Cost & Usage Report (CUR)

The detailed AWS billing file, delivered to an S3 bucket, that CloudYali reads for AWS cost. The CloudYali stack creates one in your account. See Connect AWS.

Cost allocation tag

An AWS tag key activated in Billing and Cost Management. Only activated keys appear in the Cost & Usage Report, and only from the day they are activated. See Tags in billing data.

Cost anomaly

A day on which a service cost far more than its own last 30 days suggest, or a new service with significant spend. CloudYali records one only when the impact is $100 or more. See Cost Anomalies.

Cost Management export

A scheduled Azure export that writes cost files to a storage account. CloudYali reads Azure cost from those files. See Azure cost exports.

Cost type

The kind of line on a cloud bill: usage, a fee, a tax, or a reduction such as a credit, a discount or a refund. See Cost types.

Cost view

A ready-made view of your bill that answers one cost question, with its filter, grouping and chart already set. See Cost Views.

Credit

Money a provider takes off the bill, such as promotional or committed use credits. Google Cloud credits always count in Cost Explorer; AWS credits count when Credits is ticked. See Cost types.

D

Discount

A price reduction on the bill, such as an AWS bundled discount or Savings Plan negation. AWS discounts always count in Cost Explorer. See Cost types.

E

Effective savings rate (ESR)

Net savings as a share of what all eligible usage would cost on-demand: net savings ÷ eligible usage. See Commitments.

Eligible usage

On-demand usage that a commitment could cover. Spot and preemptible usage is not eligible. See Commitments.

External ID

A value CloudYali generates for each AWS connection. The IAM role lets CloudYali in only when it presents this value. See AWS permissions.

F

FinOps

The practice of managing cloud spend as a shared job of engineering, finance and business teams: seeing costs, assigning them, and acting on them.

I

Impact

For a cost anomaly, the actual cost on the day minus the expected cost (the service's average daily cost over the last 30 days, leaving out unusual days). See Cost Anomalies.

M

Management account

The AWS account that pays for an AWS Organization, also called the payer account. Its Cost & Usage Report covers every account in the organization. See Connect an AWS Organization.

Member account

An AWS account in an AWS Organization other than the management account. See Connect an AWS Organization.

Milestone

A point in a budget, as a percentage of the limit or a dollar amount, at which CloudYali sends an alert email. See Budgets.

Mismatched key

A tag key spelled close to a standard key, such as Team for team: the edits that turn one into the other are at most 40% of the longer key's length. See Standard tags.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

An open standard that lets AI assistants call tools. CloudYali's hosted MCP server lets an assistant read your CloudYali data, as the user who approved it. See AI assistants.

N

Net savings

What commitments saved compared with on-demand prices, after paying for them: on-demand value of covered usage − commitment cost. See Commitments.

Net total

Usage plus fees plus tax, minus discounts, credits and refunds, for the cost types that are counted. See Cost types.

O

On-demand price

The public price for cloud usage with no commitment. CloudYali values commitment savings at this price (the list price on Azure). See Commitments.

R

Realized savings

The estimated monthly amount CloudYali records when you mark a savings opportunity Implemented. It is an estimate, not measured from your bill. See Cost Savings lifecycle.

Refund

Money a provider returns for an earlier charge. Azure refunds always count in Cost Explorer; AWS refunds count when Refunds is ticked. See Cost types.

Reserved Instance (RI)

An AWS commitment to a type of capacity, such as an EC2 instance type or an RDS database, for one or three years, in exchange for a lower price. See Commitments.

Rightsizing

Moving a resource to a smaller or cheaper size that still fits its use, based on its utilization. See Cost Savings.

S

Savings opportunity

A change that would lower your bill, such as rightsizing an instance or deleting an idle disk, with its estimated monthly saving. Cost Savings lists them. See Cost Savings.

Savings Plan

An AWS or Azure commitment to spend a fixed amount per hour on compute for one or three years, in exchange for lower prices on that usage. See Commitments.

Service account

A Google Cloud identity for an application rather than a person. CloudYali reads Google Cloud with a key for a service account you create. See Google Cloud permissions.

Service principal

An Azure identity for an application, created with an app registration. CloudYali reads Azure as a service principal you create, with a client secret. See Azure permissions.

Standard tag

A tag key your organization agrees to use, defined in Tag Governance. CloudYali compares other keys with it; it does not check values. See Standard tags.

T

Tag coverage

The share of cost that is tagged. In Tag Governance, credits and refunds are left out. See Tag Governance.

U

Unblended cost

AWS cost as billed, on the day each charge occurs, with no spreading of commitment fees. CloudYali shows AWS cost this way. See Cost types.

Unused commitment

Commitment you paid for but did not use, in dollars: total commitment − used commitment. See Commitments.