> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.komodor.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Observability Cost

> Find the observability spend that buys nothing — high-cardinality metrics, unread logs, unused dashboards — with an agent configured to manage that provider.

Observability Cost owns what your monitoring stack costs and what that money buys. It
attributes vendor spend to the teams and services generating it, finds the volume nobody queries,
and proposes the retention, sampling, and filter changes that remove the waste. This page covers the
outcome the module owns, the two workflows inside it, and what it needs connected.

## What this module owns

Observability spend grows by default. Every new service ships metrics, every incident adds a
dashboard, and one high-cardinality label added in a hurry can move a bill by a noticeable
percentage. Nothing removes any of it, because deleting telemetry feels like deleting the thing that
will explain the next outage.

That fear is reasonable, which is why this module leads with attribution rather than deletion:
knowing which tool, which service, and which team a line of spend belongs to turns a blunt budget
conversation into a specific one. Then waste detection does the unglamorous part — finding the
metric with cardinality nobody queries, the dashboard nobody opens, the log source producing volume
nobody reads — and every proposal states what you lose by accepting it.

Good looks like observability spend that maps to owners, a ranked list of what to cut, and no
investigation ever failing because this module removed something.

## The workflows inside it

This module contains **2 workflows**.

### Observability cost allocation

| Step                   | What happens                                                                    |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **1 · Billing ingest** | Pulls vendor invoices and usage exports.                                        |
| **2 · Attribution**    | Allocates spend by tool, service tags, and owning team.                         |
| **3 · Showback**       | Produces a per-team showback report, and a recurring digest where you want one. |

### Observability spend reduction

| Step                    | What happens                                                                            |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **1 · Usage ingest**    | Pulls metrics, logs, and trace volume with the billing per tool.                        |
| **2 · Waste detection** | Flags high-cardinality metrics, unused dashboards, and log spam, with a waste estimate. |
| **3 · Recommendation**  | Proposes retention, sampling, or drop-filter changes with projected savings.            |
| **4 · Apply**           | Applies the change, or files it as an opportunity for the owning team.                  |

<Note>
  Any retention or sampling change is approve-then-run: it is applied only after a human decision,
  because it changes what you will be able to query later.
</Note>

## What it needs connected

| Requirement                    | Why                                                                                 | Where to set it up                                                       |
| ------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Observability vendor access    | The module reads usage and volume per tool, and the assets that consume it          | [Built-in integrations](/manage-your-agents/build/built-in-integrations) |
| Vendor billing or usage export | Attribution needs the spend side of each tool                                       | [Built-in integrations](/manage-your-agents/build/built-in-integrations) |
| Service ownership              | So spend lands on a team rather than on a tag nobody recognizes                     | [Knowledge base](/manage-your-agents/build/knowledge-base)               |
| A scoped write credential      | Applying a retention or filter change is a write into your monitoring configuration | [Credentials & secrets](/manage-your-agents/build/credentials-secrets)   |

## Enabling it

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Modules → Overview">
    Observability Cost appears in the Cost Optimization family with the two workflows it
    contains.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Turn it on">
    Enabling the module adds it to your sidebar, with its waste findings list.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Connect your tools and decide who acts">
    Point the ingest steps at each observability vendor, then decide whether a change is applied by
    an agent with coverage for that tool or filed as an opportunity for the owning team.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## What you see when it runs

The module lists waste findings — the metric, dashboard, or log source, what it costs, and what the
proposal would save — plus the showback records the allocation workflow produces. Each finding
carries the run behind it, so a recommendation to drop something is reviewable rather than a
suggestion out of nowhere.

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Cloud Cost" href="/modules-and-workflows/cost-optimization/cloud-optimization">
    The cloud-bill context around observability spend.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Alert Intelligence" href="/modules-and-workflows/sre/alert-hygiene">
    The quality side: which of these signals is worth keeping.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Observability & OTel export" href="/manage-your-agents/optimize/observability-otel-export">
    Sending the platform's own telemetry to the tools you already pay for.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Approvals" href="/security-and-governance/controls/approvals">
    How a retention change waits for a human decision.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>


## Related topics

- [Cloud Cost](/modules-and-workflows/cost-optimization/cloud-optimization.md)
- [Observability & OTel export](/manage-your-agents/optimize/observability-otel-export.md)
- [Agent spend attribution](/manage-your-agents/optimize/agent-spend-attribution.md)
- [Modules & workflows](/modules-and-workflows/overview.md)
- [Optimize — how it works](/manage-your-agents/optimize/how-it-works.md)