Cloud and AI bills are hard to check. We check them.
CostAlpha independently reviews cloud and AI spend: Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, and AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. We read your actual bills alongside your contracts and setup, find where you're paying more than you should, and show you how to get it back and keep it down.
What we review
Billing accuracy
Charges checked against your agreed rates, discounts and credits, or list price where there's no contract, down to rounding and units of measure.
Contracts and renewals
Agreement terms and commitments compared with what you're billed, and what to raise before renewal.
Commitments
Prepaid commitments, reservations and savings plans: are you using what you paid for, and were they sized after the cleanup, not before?
Credits
Provider credits and funding: when they run out against when they expire, what that gap costs in cash, and what credits can't pay for.
Spend spikes
What caused a sudden jump in the bill, traced to the change behind it, and an alert that catches the next one early.
Reseller and marketplace pricing
How much markup sits between you and the provider's price, and whether marketplace purchases count toward your commitment.
Tax and invoicing
GST and VAT on cloud invoices, the right tax ID on each billing account, and input credit you may be able to claim.
Support plans
What your support tier actually delivers when something breaks, and whether that matches what you pay.
Service credits
Outages you may be owed credit for, and whether your setup qualifies for the provider's uptime guarantee.
AI spend
Model and provider choice, token usage and pricing, and AI seats you pay for but don't use.
Mergers and acquisitions
Duplicate spend while old and new systems run side by side, and the cloud pricing in transition agreements.
Account continuity
Who receives billing and suspension notices, whether payments are going through on time, and who can still act on each account if that person leaves.
How we're different
- We check the bill, not just usage. Dashboards show where money goes. We check whether you were charged what you agreed to, or list price where there's no contract, and what you're owed.
- We check the provider's recommendations rather than repeat them. Built-in advisors miss context, such as credits that can't buy reservations or a lookback inflated by one-off copies. We test each recommendation against your situation.
- We put actions in the right order. Clean up first, then size commitments to the smaller bill, so you don't lock in waste for a year or three.
- Your data stays protected. We can sanitize your billing exports, removing account names, IDs and tags, so only what the review needs is kept.
- Your team owns the results. Each finding comes with evidence your team can act on and present. We focus on savings large enough that our cost is never the question.
How we work
Engineers alongside your team
Like forward-deployed engineers, we work hands-on with your real data and build the checks in your environment, then leave them with your team.
Weeks, not quarters
Engagements run 2 to 4 weeks with a defined scope, so you see results before committing to more.
Who we are
Our founding team brings more than 20 years in cloud commerce and engineering: Azure, cloud marketplaces, AI, and cloud migrations through mergers and acquisitions, for organizations in technology and digital, healthcare, retail, banking, and state and local government.
Become a design partner
Design partners help shape the service and get a full review free. We're looking for finance and technology leaders, especially at companies spending $3M or more a year on cloud and AI, who can share their billing data.
- SignA mutual confidentiality and data use agreement, before any data is shared.
- ShareThree months of billing exports, which we can sanitize for you. Your agreements, invoices and a read-only configuration export are optional.
- ReviewWritten findings within 10 business days, each with evidence and an estimated value, then a follow-up once two weeks of the provider's optimizer data is in.
- DecideA 45-minute readout. Act on findings yourself or with us. Nothing is published without your approval.
Get in touch
Tell us whether you're interested in an engagement or the design partner program.
Prefer email? Write to [email protected], or send an intro.