Set budget alerts on GCP & AWS

To manage costs on your cloud infrastructure, you can use an external tool (like Tailwarden for instance), but you can also work with native tools from your cloud provider.

This is the goal of this article, we will see how to do it simply on Google Cloud and AWS.

The main advantages are that you will be very close to the vendor's philosophy and you will limit the number of tools you use.

On Google Cloud

The goal here is simply to set a budget limit and you will be alerted if it is exceeded.

First, go to the “Budget & alerts” section and clic on “Create a budget” :

Note : You should select the Billing account associated to the project you want to manage.

Then enter a name for your alert and delimit according to your needs, by projects and services (in our case we will make a global alert) :

Select an amount to be alerted :

You can configure some thresholds and define who receives the alerts (the users can be setup in the Billing account management section) :

Now your alert is ready and you will be notified if necessary :

On AWS

First, go to the “Billing and Cost Management” section and clic on “Create budget” :

Then choose the template “Monthly cost budget” and enter a name for your alert :

Select an amount to be alerted and email recipients, by default this template applies to all AWS services in the current account, and thresolds are defined (you can customize them later) :

Now your alert is ready and you will be notified if necessary :

Conclusion

You now have the keys to manage your budget alerts simply on these two cloud providers.

The advantage with native tools is that you have reduced costs and you directly adhere to the philosophy of the cloud provider. In return, you will not have a centralized interface for a multi-cloud context.

It's now up to you to decide what is most interesting in your case.