Pricing

cloudrift estimates the monthly cost of every wasted resource. Prices are resolved from three layers, per (region, priceKey) — the most specific wins.

The three layers

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  1. Config overrides (prices)       ← ALWAYS WINS   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  2. AWS Pricing API (--live-pricing)                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  3. Built-in static table (prices.json)             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

1. Config overrides (highest priority)

Your negotiated/enterprise rates, defined in the prices field of cloudrift.config.json:

{
  "prices": {
    "eu-west-1": { "nat-gateway": 28.5, "ebs-gp3": 0.07 },
    "default": { "elastic-ip": 3.2 }
  }
}

This is the only way to make the report match what you actually pay.

2. AWS Pricing API (--live-pricing)

With the --live-pricing flag, cloudrift fetches current public list prices from the AWS Pricing API at startup:

node apps/cli/dist/main.js analyze --live-pricing

The adapter accepts a price only when the filters resolve to a single value — ambiguous results fall back to the static table without guessing. Any Pricing API failure degrades the entire layer to the static fallback with a warning (never a crash).

Requires the pricing:GetProducts IAM permission in addition to the standard permissions.

3. Built-in static table

Always present as the final fallback. Contains specific prices for 6 regions (us-east-1, us-west-2, eu-west-1, eu-central-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-northeast-1) with fallback to us-east-1 for all others.

Main price table (us-east-1)

Live-pricing gated scanners (per-instance)

Some scanners need a per-instance-type/node-type price that’s too variable for the static table. These are registered only with --live-pricing:

• ec2-underutilized — EC2 per instance type
• rds-underutilized — RDS per instance class and engine
• elasticache-idle — per cache node type
• redshift-idle-cluster — per node type
• opensearch-idle-domain — per instance type
• msk-idle-cluster — per broker instance type
• documentdb-idle-instance — per instance class
• neptune-idle-instance — per instance class
• mq-idle-broker — per broker instance type
• workspaces-idle — per bundle type
• sagemaker-notebook-idle — per instance type
• sagemaker-endpoint-idle — per instance type
• eks-node-overprovisioned — per node instance type

Without --live-pricing these scanners simply aren’t run (they aren’t registered in the composition root), rather than reporting a zero estimate.

How it’s shown in reports

Every report (table, PDF, JSON) shows a prices as of indicator reflecting the layer used:

• Static only: the date the prices.json file was last updated
• With live pricing: the date of the live fetch
• With overrides: … + custom overrides

Honest caveat on pricing

Even with --live-pricing, AWS returns list prices — not your actual bill. Savings Plans, Reserved Instances and EDP discounts are not reflected. The prices overrides in the config are the only way to encode the rates you actually pay.

cloudrift’s pricing is an estimation tool, not a precise billing calculator. Use it as an indicator of magnitudes and priorities, not as a substitute for Cost Explorer.