Cost & Usage

The Cost & Usage view provides a more detailed and intuitive view of cloud costs and consumption statistics. The view gives you the ability to explore the usage of all services with the currently applicable list prices, excluding any discounts and VAT. It provides a clear breakdown of service usage and pricing, allowing for better visibility into your consumption patterns. It compares estimated costs and usage across various product categories, which are subdivided into specific line items. The page outlines the services or features used, the total units consumed, and the corresponding costs incurred.

The granular level of detail ensures you clearly understand where your resources are being utilized and how they contribute to overall spending. You can view relevant data that helps make informed decisions about your cloud resources.

Prerequisites: You must be one of the following to access the Cost & Usage view:

Contract Type	Contract Users	Accessible?
Regular contracts	Contract administrators Contract owners	✅ ✅
Reseller contracts	Contract owners	✅

The cost calculation depends on the aggregated usage of all resources consumed during the selected period. Because usage data is updated periodically (at least once a day) depending on the product, the usage for the current period may be offset by up to 24 hours. Thus, the report ensures you have the required information for monitoring consumptions and accommodating the update intervals of various services to give you a cost report for services and product usage in your cloud environment. For more information on pricing, see IONOS Cloud Prices.

Note:

• Billing is based on product usage, with charges computed according to the listed prices. Hence, it should be viewed as an estimate and may not match the final invoice details.

• This page does not reflect special pricing or discounts, meaning the figures shown may not align with any custom agreements or promotional rates in place.

In addition to the Cost & Usage view on the DCD, you can retrieve detailed invoice data and a granular resource-allocated usage distribution through the IONOS Cloud Billing API. It provides a powerful and flexible way to access comprehensive billing information, enabling you to track and analyze your usage at a granular level programmatically. By leveraging the Billing API, you can integrate billing data into your internal systems, automate reporting processes, and gain deeper insights into resource consumption across various services. We recommend you explore and utilize this API to streamline your billing workflows and enhance cost management capabilities.

The Cost & Usage view, in combination with the Cost Alert feature, provides an enhanced way for you to proactively manage your cloud expenditures. When setting up a cost alert you will receive a notification as soon as the cost of your contract reaches the predefined threshold, allowing you to analyze your usage. The integration offers greater control and visibility over usage patterns and associated costs, helping avoid unexpected charges.

Access Cost & Usage

To view the services and products cost and usage for your account, follow these steps:

1. In the DCD, go to Menu > Your Profile > Cost & Usage.

Select Cost and Usage

2. Select a Period from the drop-down list to generate a detailed report for the specified time frame. By default, the current month and its breakdown are displayed. Additionally, you have the option to generate a report for the past six months, starting from the current month.

Select Period

Result: The report displays the following information:

• Period: The current period is displayed by default. You may notice that the cost computation for the period starts from the beginning of the month. However, if you choose:  — Current month: The report is generated from the first of the month until the date of report generation.  — Previous months: The report is generated from the first of the month until the end of the month. You can generate the report only for the last six months of the contract.

• Current total amount for this period: Displays the total cost incurred for the respective month due to the services and product usage.

• Product categories: The product categories on the left frame display the total cost for using individual products or services from the respective product category. Click on it for a detailed breakdown. Products or services that do not have a product mapping are listed in Others.

• Price category: Displays the total price associated with the products or services consumed in the respective product category. It is a summary of the product or service usage that helps identify the total cost of this category, meaning costs are grouped per consumed product, independent of whether a single instance or multiple services caused the usage. In some cases, like for Virtual Data Centers (VDCs), the total cost is aggregated by each VDC. The price category shows one of the following based on the usage:  — —: No service or product was used from the respective product category during the chosen period.  — 0.00: The free quota covered the services or products that were used.  — Total cost: Services or products from the respective product category were used. Click on it for a detailed breakdown.

Cost and Usage view

Detailed breakdown

The table displays the following information:

• Item: Displays the product item description including the description of the calculation unit of the product item. Example: 1h per GB RAM. If aggregate costs are displayed, like in VDCs, click on it to view a detailed service or product consumption breakdown.

• Price per unit: Displays the cost per unit for the service or product used.

• Usage: Displays the number of units consumed. It indicates the number of units consumed by each product item.

• Total: Displays the total cost incurred for the amount of units of the respective product item. It is calculated as price per unit * amount of usage.