Cost Explorer & Cost Flow

The Cost Explorer gives you a hierarchical view of your Azure spend. Start at the subscription level and click any row to drill down into its resource groups, then click again to see individual resources within that group.

Each level shows the total cost, percentage of parent, and a sparkline trend for the selected time period. This makes it easy to spot which part of the hierarchy is driving a cost increase without needing to open Azure Portal or write Kusto queries.

A breadcrumb navigation bar at the top of the page tracks your drill-down path (e.g. All Subscriptions → Production → rg-api). You can click any breadcrumb segment to jump back to that level instantly.

The Cost Flow visualization presents your spend as a flow diagram, showing how costs move from subscriptions through services to individual cost categories. This view is especially useful for understanding the relative weight of different services within a subscription.

Flows are rendered as proportional bands — thicker bands represent higher spend. Hover over any band to see the exact dollar amount and percentage. The left side of the diagram shows subscriptions, the middle shows Azure service categories (e.g. Virtual Machines, Storage, Networking), and the right side shows the meter categories that contribute to each service cost.

Cost Flow helps answer questions like “How much of my Production subscription goes to compute vs. storage?” without needing to export data to a spreadsheet.

Both Cost Explorer and Cost Flow support time-period filtering to let you focus on the window that matters most. The available periods are:

• 7 days — Ideal for investigating recent spikes or verifying that a cost-saving action took effect.
• 30 days — The default view. Gives a full month of context and aligns well with billing cycles.
• 90 days — Useful for spotting longer-term trends, seasonal patterns, or gradual creep in resource costs.

Select a period using the toggle buttons at the top-right of either page. The data refreshes immediately, and all drill-down state is preserved when you switch periods, so you can compare the same resource group across different time windows without losing your place.