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Budgets

Budgets help you catch overspending before it happens. Set a monthly limit, and oncost tracks your pace and alerts you when you’re at risk.

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Creating a budget

  1. Go to Budgets in the sidebar
  2. Click New Budget
  3. Set a name, monthly limit, and optional scope (provider, service, or tag)
  4. Click Save

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Budget card

Each budget card shows:
  • Progress bar — current spend vs. limit, color-coded by status
  • Daily burn rate — current spend divided by days elapsed (e.g., “$1,380/day”)
  • Budget pace — what the daily burn rate should be to stay on budget (limit / days in month)
  • Pace comparison — “X% spent with Y% of month elapsed”
  • Forecast overshoot — when projected to exceed, shows “On pace to exceed by ~$X”

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Status levels

StatusMeaning
On trackSpend is below the expected pace
WarningSpend is ahead of pace but hasn’t exceeded the limit
CriticalForecast shows budget will be exceeded
ExceededSpend has passed the monthly limit

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Sparkline

Warning and critical budgets show a mini chart with your daily spend line vs. the budget pace line, so you can see the trajectory.

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Alerts

Budget warnings are surfaced in:
  • The Home Feed as budget warning cards
  • Slack notifications (if configured in Settings > Notifications)
  • Weekly digest emails

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Provider budgets

oncost automatically syncs budgets from your cloud providers and displays them alongside your oncost budgets. Provider budgets are read-only — they are managed in the provider’s console, and oncost mirrors them for a unified view.

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Supported providers

ProviderWhat gets syncedNotes
AWSAll AWS Budgets (cost, usage, reservation, savings plans)Dollar-amount budgets from AWS Budgets API. Uses your existing cross-account IAM role.
GCPCloud Billing budgets per billing accountDollar-amount budgets from Cloud Billing Budget API. Uses your existing service account.
GitHubPer-product spending limits (Actions, Packages, Copilot, etc.)Dollar-amount budgets from enhanced billing platform. Uses your existing fine-grained PAT.
AnthropicWorkspace definitions with spend limits (when available)Uses existing admin API key. Each workspace becomes a budget entry. Spend limits are surfaced when Anthropic exposes them.
OpenAIPer-project rate limits (tokens/requests per minute)Uses existing admin API key. Throughput-based caps per project and model, not dollar amounts.

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How sync works

Provider budgets are collected automatically during each hourly sync cycle. oncost detects new budgets, updates changed ones, and marks removed budgets so they no longer appear. Each provider budget card shows when it was last synced.

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Source badges and filtering

Every budget card shows a source badge (e.g., “AWS”, “GCP”, “GITHUB”) so you can tell at a glance where a budget comes from. Use the source filter dropdown to show only budgets from a specific provider, or select “All” to see everything. The filter persists in the URL, so you can bookmark or share filtered views.

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Read-only behavior

Provider budgets cannot be edited or deleted from oncost — the edit and delete buttons are hidden. To change a provider budget, go to the provider’s console. oncost will pick up the changes on the next sync.

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Summary stats

The budget page shows a summary bar with total budgeted amount, total spend, a status breakdown (on track, warning, critical, exceeded), and a source breakdown across all your budgets.

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Alerts

Provider budget warnings appear in the Home Feed with a source badge and “View in [PROVIDER]” link. Slack and email notifications for provider budget breaches include a source prefix (e.g., “[AWS] Production at 95%”).

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View spend

Click View Spend on any budget card to jump to the Cost Explorer pre-filtered to that budget’s scope.