> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.monk.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Costs and billing alerts

> See estimates before you deploy, track usage per cluster and set billing alerts

Monk shows an estimated cost before anything is created, reports usage per cluster afterwards, and can alert you when spending passes a threshold.

## Before deploying: estimates

Every plan that creates machines shows an estimated cost in the [local dashboard](/getting-started/local-dashboard). You can also ask directly:

```
/monk how much would this plan cost per month?
/monk estimate three nodes of cx32 on Hetzner in fsn1
/monk compare the estimate on DigitalOcean and on AWS
```

Estimates include cloud machine prices and Monk's fee. Managed services such as Atlas or RDS, data transfer and storage growth are billed by their providers and may not be in the figure.

## After deploying: usage

```
/monk what are my clusters costing this month?
/monk show usage for last month
```

Usage is reported per cluster as cloud cost plus Monk's fee.

## Billing alerts

Billing alerts are emails about your organization's Monk fee. You can set fee thresholds, turn on alerts for long-running infrastructure, and choose the address they go to:

```
/monk what are my billing alerts?
/monk email billing@example.com when the Monk fee passes $100 this month
/monk alert me about clusters that have been running for a long time
```

You can also change them in the web dashboard under Settings.

## What you review

Changing billing alerts opens an approval in the local dashboard. Every deploy, scale-up or new cluster shows its estimated cost before you approve it.

## Reducing cost

Common changes that lower the bill, each reviewed as a plan:

* remove nodes you don't need: see [Scale and resize](/guides/scale-and-resize)
* put preview environments on a schedule: see [Preview environments](/guides/preview-environments)
* delete clusters you no longer use
* compare estimates in another region or cloud: see [Choose a cloud](/guides/choose-a-cloud)

## Separate bills

Your cloud provider bills you for the machines. Monk bills its subscription and fee. Your coding agent has its own subscription.

## Next

* [Scale and resize](/guides/scale-and-resize)
* [Cost and usage](/concepts/cost-and-usage)


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