Skip to main content

​
What It Does

Monk tracks the cost of your entire infrastructure in real-time. Ask for current costs, projections, or comparisons - Monk knows the price of every resource across all cloud providers and integrations.

​
How It Works

​
Cost Knowledge Base

Monk maintains up-to-date cost information for cloud resources: What Monk tracks:
  • Cloud provider pricing - Current rates from AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean
  • Resource uptime - How long each resource has been running
  • Integration pricing - Costs for databases, essential services, and APIs that implement cost estimation
  • Usage-based pricing - Data transfer, storage, API calls where applicable
Cluster cost calculated by Monk Monk continuously updates its pricing database to ensure accuracy.

​
Real-Time Cost Queries

Ask Monk for cost information anytime via chat in your IDE: Current costs: 
You: What's the current cost of running this system?

Monk: Current infrastructure cost breakdown:
      - 4x AWS t3.medium instances: $0.33/hour ($240/month)
      - PostgreSQL RDS (db.t3.medium): $0.068/hour ($50/month)
      - Redis ElastiCache (cache.t3.micro): $0.017/hour ($12/month)
      - Application Load Balancer: $0.025/hour ($18/month)

      Total: $0.44/hour ($320/month)
Different time units: 
You: How much per day?

Monk: Current daily cost: $10.56

You: Cost per week?

Monk: Current weekly cost: $73.92

You: Show me cost per second

Monk: Current cost: $0.000122/second
Monk can express costs in any time unit: second, hour, day, week, month.

​
Cost Projections & Estimates

Want to know future costs? Ask Monk to project: Monthly projections: 
You: Project the monthly cost

Monk: Based on current usage:
      - Monthly projection: $320
      - Assumes 24/7 operation
      - Does not include usage-based charges (data transfer, API calls)
Estimate before changes: 
You: How much would it cost to add 2 more instances?

Monk: Cost estimate with 2 additional t3.medium instances:
      - Current: $0.44/hour ($320/month)
      - With 2 more: $0.60/hour ($440/month)
      - Increase: $0.16/hour ($120/month, +37.5%)
Monk helps you understand cost impact before making infrastructure changes.

​
Integration Cost Support

Many integrations implement Monk’s cost estimation interface: Supported:
  • Cloud-managed databases - RDS, Cloud SQL, Azure Database, DigitalOcean Managed Database
  • Cloud storage - S3, Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, DigitalOcean Spaces
  • Managed caches - ElastiCache, Memorystore, Redis Cloud
  • Third-party services - MongoDB Atlas, Redis Cloud, Neon, and more
Coverage varies:
  • Core cloud resources (VMs, storage, networking) - ✅ Fully tracked
  • Popular managed services - 🔜 Some tracked
  • Specialized integrations - ⚠️ Varies (we strive for all to support cost tracking)
Integration cost tracking: Coverage is continuously improving. Check with Monk to see if a specific service supports cost estimation, or refer to Integrations for details.

​
Cost Comparison (Hypothetical Resources)

Here’s a powerful feature: Monk understands costs of resources you’re not even using. Why this matters: Want to know if switching clouds or regions would save money? Ask Monk. Examples: 
You: How much would this cost on DigitalOcean instead of AWS?

Monk: Current AWS cost: $0.44/hour ($320/month)
      Equivalent DigitalOcean Droplets: $0.28/hour ($205/month)
      Savings: $115/month (36% cheaper)

You: What if we moved to us-west-2 instead of us-east-1?

Monk: Same infrastructure in us-west-2:
      Cost: $0.46/hour ($335/month)
      Difference: +$15/month (5% more expensive)

You: Compare cost of running this on GCP vs Azure

Monk: Current (AWS): $320/month
      GCP equivalent: $295/month (-$25/month)
      Azure equivalent: $340/month (+$20/month)
Use cases:
  • Before deployment - Compare clouds to choose the most cost-effective
  • Migration planning - See if migrating would save money
  • Region selection - Pick the cheapest region for your needs
  • Optimization - Evaluate alternatives to reduce costs

​
Coming Soon

Proactive Cost Analysis & Optimization COMING SOON The next evolution: Monk analyzes your costs 24/7 and proactively drives them down. What’s coming:
  • 24/7 cost monitoring - Monk watches your spending continuously
  • Optimization proposals - Monk identifies opportunities to reduce costs
  • Actionable recommendations - Specific changes Monk can make to save money
  • Autonomous execution - Monk executes approved changes automatically
How it will work: 
Monk: Cost analysis complete. I found 3 optimization opportunities:

      1. API servers running at 20% average CPU
         → Downsize from t3.medium to t3.small
         → Savings: $120/month

      2. Database idle 18 hours/day
         → Switch to smaller instance during off-peak
         → Savings: $25/month

      3. Redis cache hit rate only 40%
         → Reduce cache size by 50%
         → Savings: $6/month

      Total potential savings: $151/month (43%)

      Approve these changes?

You: Yes, do it
No manual cost analysis, no spreadsheets - Monk handles it autonomously.

​
What Makes This Different

Traditional cloud cost management requires:
  • Manual cost tracking in cloud provider consoles
  • Spreadsheets to aggregate multi-cloud costs
  • CloudHealth, Cloudability, or similar tools ($$$)
  • Manual cost estimation before changes
  • Learning each cloud provider’s pricing model
  • Remembering to check costs regularly
  • Hiring FinOps specialists for optimization
With Monk:
  • Today: Ask for costs anytime, get instant answers. Compare alternatives effortlessly.
  • Soon: Monk monitors 24/7 and proactively reduces your costs.

​
Key Capabilities

Current:
  • ✅ Real-time cost tracking - Know current spending instantly
  • ✅ Flexible time units - Cost per second/hour/day/week/month
  • ✅ Cost projections - Estimate future spending
  • ✅ Pre-change estimates - Know cost impact before scaling or changes
  • ✅ Integration support - Tracks databases, services, APIs (varies by integration)
  • ✅ Hypothetical comparisons - Cost of resources you’re not using
  • ✅ Multi-cloud comparison - Compare AWS vs GCP vs Azure vs DigitalOcean
  • ✅ Region comparison - Compare costs across regions
  • ✅ Component breakdown - Cost per service and cloud provider
  • ✅ Up-to-date pricing - Continuously updated cost database
Coming Soon:
  • 🔜 Proactive cost analysis - 24/7 monitoring and optimization proposals
  • 🔜 Autonomous optimization - Monk executes approved cost-saving changes
  • 🔜 Budget alerts - Notifications when spending exceeds thresholds
  • 🔜 Cost anomaly detection - Alerts for unexpected spending spikes
  • 🔜 Usage-based tracking - Detailed tracking of data transfer, API calls, etc.

​
Impact

Today: Ask “how much does this cost?” and get instant, accurate answers. Compare clouds, regions, and configurations effortlessly. No spreadsheets, no cost estimation tools needed. Soon: Monk watches your costs 24/7, proactively proposes optimizations, and executes them upon approval - continuously driving your infrastructure costs down.