Unit Economics
Cost per active user, per API request, per order, per inference — the metric that separates growth from inefficiency.
At a glance
| Route | /unit-economics |
| Group | Analyze |
| Page permission | unit_economics |
What it is
Cost-per-unit tracking. It relates cloud spend to units of business value — cost per active user, per API request, per order, per inference — measures allocation coverage, and generates team showback reports.
Who it is for
Finance business partners, product leaders, and engineering managers who need to know whether cost efficiency is improving — which total spend cannot tell them.
How it works
A unit metric is defined once, then fed with periodic data points representing the business volume for a period. The platform divides allocated cost by that volume to produce a cost-per-unit series with trend.
Three ways to feed it
Start with Suggestions
The suggestion engine proposes candidate unit metrics derived from telemetry already being collected. This is by far the fastest way to populate the module — defining metrics by hand from a blank page is where most teams stall.
Features
- Custom unit metric definition with per-metric trend analysis
- Three data-point ingestion paths: manual, webhook, and telemetry-fed suggestions
- Suggested unit metrics with accept and dismiss workflow
- Allocation coverage measurement, showing what proportion of spend is attributable
- Monthly team showback reporting
- Overview across all defined metrics
- Metric deletion and lifecycle management
How to use it
Review Suggestions first
The engine proposes metrics derived from telemetry you already collect. Start here, not with a blank metric definition form.
Define additional metrics manually
Only where the business unit is not derivable from infrastructure telemetry.
Configure the webhook for each metric
So the owning business system posts volume automatically.
Hand-entry does not survive contact with a busy month. If a metric matters, automate its feed.
Check allocation coverage
Low coverage means the cost-per-unit figures are computed on a partial base and should be treated cautiously. Improve it through Cost Allocation and Ownership.
Review trends monthly
Watching direction rather than absolute value.
Generate showback reports
To give each team its own cost-per-unit figure.
Why it matters
Total cloud spend is a poor management metric, because it rises with success
A business that doubles its customers and increases cloud spend by sixty percent has improved substantially — but a total-spend chart shows only an increase.
Cost per unit separates growth from inefficiency. It is the metric that lets an engineering organisation argue credibly that it is becoming more efficient while spending more.
Connects to
- Computed within Intelligence
- Depends on Cost Allocation and Ownership for allocation coverage
- Team allocation is one of the eight FinOps Maturity dimensions
- Reports surface in Reports and Cost Center → Enterprise Ops
Deploy & Migration
Repository-to-cloud deployment planning — analyse a repo, compare deployment paths across clouds, generate infrastructure blueprints, and run the migration.
FinOps Maturity
An objective score across eight weighted dimensions, computed from measured workspace state rather than a questionnaire, with a roadmap ranked by points gained.