Cost
What are the Cost tools for?
The `cost` MCP tools answer spend questions at tier 0: totals by provider, team or tag, trends, budget health, anomalies and per-resource cost history, all with writes off. Ten tools in the category act: four need tier 1, five need tier 2, and `schedule_event_readiness` needs tier 3.
Tools
| Tool | Access | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
get_ai_usage | read | Get AI Gateway usage and spend — one row per LLM request routed through the gateway |
get_anomalies | read | Get detected cost anomalies — unexpected spend spikes — in a date range |
get_billing_sync_status | read | Get billing data sync health per cloud account |
get_budget_summary | read | Get budget health summary — counts of healthy, warning, and over-budget budgets |
get_cost_by_provider | read | Get cost breakdown grouped by cloud provider |
get_cost_by_resources | read | Get per-resource cost breakdown showing individual resource costs |
get_cost_by_tag | read | Get cost and savings grouped by tag key (showback) |
get_cost_by_team | read | Get cost and savings attributed to each team (showback) |
get_cost_overview | read | START HERE for any cost question: 'where is the money going', 'what is my spend', 'how do I cut cost' |
get_cost_trends | read | Get cost trends over time at daily, weekly, or monthly granularity |
get_costs | read | Get the organisation-level cost and savings summary |
get_currency_exchange_rate | read | Get current currency exchange rates used by the organisation for cost calculations |
get_report_snapshots | read | Get monthly cost and savings snapshots for historical comparison |
get_resource_cost_history | read | Get daily cost history for a specific resource over a date range |
list_budgets | read | List budgets configured for resources or resource groups |
What an assistant can answer with these
Start with get_cost_overview. It is the entry point, and it returns the org-wide picture an
assistant needs before drilling anywhere. From there the tools split by the question being asked:
- “Where is the money going?”:
get_cost_by_provider,get_cost_by_resources,get_cost_by_team,get_cost_by_tag. The last two are showback: they attribute spend to the owning team or tag rather than the account that happens to hold the resource. - “Is it going up?”:
get_cost_trendsfor daily, weekly or monthly movement, andget_resource_cost_historyfor one resource over time. - “Did something break?”:
get_anomaliesreturns detected spikes for a period,get_billing_sync_statustells you whether the underlying billing data is current. - “Are we within budget?”:
list_budgetsandget_budget_summary.
get_ai_usage is the odd one out: it reports AI Gateway spend, one row per LLM request, so an
assistant can account for its own cost alongside your infrastructure.
Which tools here can change something
The spend questions above need no write access: every tool named on this page so far is
read-only (tier 0), so they work at the default org setting. The category also holds 10 tools
that act. Four need tier 1: export_cost_report, delete_ai_model, preview_event_cost and
preview_event_readiness. Five need tier 2: add_ai_model, create_event_readiness,
update_event_readiness, delete_event_readiness and cancel_event_readiness.
schedule_event_readiness needs tier 3. create_budget and update_budget live in the
govern category, behind tier 1.
Numbers are reconciled, not estimated
These tools read the same daily billing rollup the dashboards use, so a figure an assistant
quotes matches what a human sees in the UI. get_billing_sync_status exists so an assistant can
say “billing last synced 4 hours ago” instead of silently reporting stale totals as current.
Cost tools: common questions
Can an assistant answer cost questions with writes turned off?
Yes. Every spend, trend, budget and anomaly read here is tier 0, so those work at the default org setting. Ten tools in the category do act, mostly AI model and event-readiness management: four at tier 1, five at tier 2 and schedule_event_readiness at tier 3. create_budget and update_budget live in govern behind tier 1.
Which cost tool should an assistant call first?
get_cost_overview. It is the entry point, and it returns the org-wide picture an assistant needs before drilling into a provider, team or tag.
How do I know a quoted figure is not stale?
get_billing_sync_status reports billing sync health per cloud account, so an assistant can say when billing last synced instead of presenting old totals as current. The figures themselves come from the same daily rollup the dashboards read.