Before you begin
- Cost Burn and Cost Allocation need Host Pool Cost Tracking, included on Atlas AVD
- Cost Intelligence needs the Cost Intelligence view permission, which most built-in roles include (Administrator, Operator, Security Officer, Auditor, Helpdesk, Billing Viewer and the read-only reporting roles)
Finding cost pages
Cost pages live in the Financial section of the left sidebar. Depending on your plan and role, it shows Cost Burn, Cost Intelligence, Cost Allocation and Orphaned Resources. (Microsoft 365 license usage now lives under Microsoft 365 → Licensing.)
Cost Burn
Open Cost Burn to track what your host pools cost over time.
- The tiles across the top show Estimated This Month (Trending), a projection of this month's total with progress through the month, then Last 24 Hours, Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days, each compared with the previous period of the same length.
- Cost History charts the monthly run rate as a Total and by VM, Disk and Network (plus Platform, the Atlas platform's own cost, on your primary tenant), alongside the Daily Burn and the Cumulative (MTD) total on a second axis. Switch the interval between Hour, Day, Week and Month, and drag across the chart to zoom (Reset Zoom zooms back out). The panel beside it shows the latest VM, Disk and Network cost.
- Cost by Host Pool lists each pool's average monthly cost, its share of the total, its VM, Disk and Net split, and its $ / User, with a chart of each pool's share below the table.
- Export saves the Cost History in view as CSV, XLSX or PDF.
Cost Burn figures are estimates built from regular cost snapshots of each host pool, not your billed invoice, so they can differ slightly from Azure Cost Management. Click How is this calculated? on the page for the full method.
Cost Intelligence (realized savings)
Cost Intelligence opens the Cost Savings page, which tracks the Azure spend Atlas has avoided through automated actions (idle VM shutdowns, drain-mode deallocation, disk-tier downgrades and right-sizing). It shows your estimated monthly cost, total lifetime savings, a KPI row, a baseline-versus-actual Cost Over Time chart for the range you pick, a savings breakdown, recommendations, a reservations advisor, and a log of savings events. Export offers CSV, XLSX and PDF.
A methodology page linked from Cost Intelligence explains how each savings figure is calculated.
Cost Allocation
Cost Allocation breaks your estimated Azure spend down by cost-allocation tag, such as department, project or environment. Cost by Tag groups host pools by the tag value you pick (pools without the tag appear as untagged), and Tag Policy lists host pools that are missing a required tag so you can fix them.
Cost per user
You can see cost per user in three places: the $ / User column in Cost Burn's Cost by Host Pool table, the Cost Per User Report on the Reports page (unique monthly users, estimated cost and cost per user by host pool), and the Users tab of Analytics.
Cost reports you can download or schedule
On the Reports page you can export the AVD Cost Report (an executive-friendly monthly cost summary by host pool), the Azure Spend Report (billed spend for the whole subscription by service, including non-AVD resources), the Cost Per User Report and the Orphaned Resources Report as PDF, XLSX or CSV. The host pool cost report and the Cost Per User Report can also be emailed on a schedule.