Cost management
Microsoft Cost Management
Budgets, cost alerts, analysis, and governance signals.
Key points
- Cost analysis explores actual and forecast charges at supported billing scopes.
- Budgets compare spend with thresholds and can notify contacts or action groups.
- A budget does not automatically stop or deallocate resources.
Best-known use cases
- Notify an application owner before monthly spend exceeds plan.
- Analyze subscription cost by service or tag.
What candidates often confuse it with
- Budget vs quota: financial threshold and signal vs service capacity limit.
- Budget vs Advisor: configured spend threshold vs generated optimization recommendation.
Key takeaway
Use Cost Management to understand spend and notify on thresholds, not as a hard resource shutdown mechanism.
Related services
- Azure Policy
- Azure resource locks
- Azure Advisor
Relevant exam tasks
- D1.3.S1 — Implement and manage Azure Policy
- D1.3.S2 — Configure resource locks
- D1.3.S6 — Manage costs by using alerts, budgets, and Azure Advisor recommendations