Azure Cost Management Skill

Unified skill for all Azure cost management tasks: querying historical costs, forecasting future spending, and optimizing to reduce waste.

When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when user wants to:

• Query or analyze Azure costs (how much am I spending, show my bill, cost breakdown)
• Break down costs by service, resource, location, or tag
• Analyze cost trends over time
• Forecast future Azure spending or project end-of-month costs
• Optimize Azure costs, reduce spending, or find savings
• Find orphaned or unused resources
• Rightsize Azure VMs, containers, or services
• Generate cost optimization reports

Quick Reference

MCP Tools

💡 Tip: Prefer MCP tools over direct CLI commands. Use az rest only when MCP tools don't cover the specific operation.

Routing

Read the user's request and follow the appropriate workflow below.

Important: When optimizing costs, always present the total bill and cost breakdown alongside optimization recommendations.

Scope Reference (Shared Across All Workflows)

💡 Tip: These are scope paths only — not complete URLs. Combine with the API endpoint and version.

Part 1: Cost Query Workflow

For the full cost query workflow (scope selection, report types, timeframes, dataset configuration, API calls, pagination, guardrails, examples, and error handling), see:

📄 Cost Query Workflow

Part 2: Cost Optimization Workflow

For the full cost optimization workflow (prerequisites, best practices, Redis/AKS-specific analysis, Azure Quick Review, resource discovery, cost queries, pricing validation, utilization metrics, and report generation), see:

📄 Cost Optimization Workflow

Part 3: Cost Forecast Workflow

For the full cost forecast workflow (scope selection, time period rules, dataset configuration, forecast-specific options, API calls, response interpretation, guardrails, and error handling), see:

📄 Cost Forecast Workflow

Data Classification

• ACTUAL DATA = Retrieved from Azure Cost Management API
• ACTUAL METRICS = Retrieved from Azure Monitor
• VALIDATED PRICING = Retrieved from official Azure pricing pages
• ESTIMATED SAVINGS = Calculated based on actual data and validated pricing

Best Practices

• Always query actual costs first — never estimate or assume
• Always present the total bill alongside optimization recommendations
• Validate pricing from official sources — account for free tiers
• Use REST API for cost queries (more reliable than az costmanagement query)
• Always include the ClientType: GitHubCopilotForAzure header on all Cost Management API requests (--headers "ClientType=GitHubCopilotForAzure" in az rest)
• Save audit trail — include all queries and responses
• Include Azure Portal links for all resources
• For costs < $10/month, emphasize operational improvements over financial savings
• Never execute destructive operations without explicit approval
• On 429 responses, check all x-ms-ratelimit-microsoft.costmanagement-*-retry-after headers (qpu-retry-after, entity-retry-after, tenant-retry-after), wait for the longest value, and do not retry until that duration has elapsed. The per-scope limit (4 requests/minute) is the most restrictive.

Common Pitfalls

• Assuming costs: Always query actual data from Cost Management API
• Ignoring free tiers: Many services have generous allowances
• Using wrong date ranges: 30 days for costs, 14 days for utilization
• Not showing the bill: Always present cost breakdown alongside optimization recommendations
• Cost query failures: Use az rest with JSON body, not az costmanagement query

Safety Requirements

• Get approval before deleting resources
• Test changes in non-production first
• Provide dry-run commands for validation
• Include rollback procedures

SDK Quick References

• Redis Management: .NET