Cost per API request with Datadog or CloudWatch metrics
Divide a service's allocated cost by its request volume from Datadog or CloudWatch, and track it release after release.
Runs in
Claude · Slack
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
Playbook
What the agent does
From what Costory notices to what you decide. Costory suggests the next step in conversation, and you decide whether to go ahead.
Costory notices
A release changes a service's cost per request.
Costory investigates
01
Allocate the service
All cost lines for the service, including shared ones.
02
Bring request volume
From Datadog or CloudWatch.
03
Formula
Cost per 1M requests.
04
Mark releases
Deploy events show which release moved the unit cost.
Where you see it
Claude
You decide
The service team decides whether to roll back or optimize.
Why it matters
Engineers optimize latency because they can see it. Cost per request is just as easy to track once cost and metrics live together.
Who it’s for
Backend engineers, platform teams
Where it runs
Claude · Slack
What you get
What lands in front of your team
An engineering-native unit
Cost per request, like latency.
Release-aware
See which deploy moved it.
Early warning
Alerts on unit cost drift.
Sources and assistants
What it connects
Data sources
Example prompts
Or drive it yourself
Build
Show cost per 1M requests for checkout-api over the last 90 days using Datadog request counts, with deploys overlaid.
FAQ
Questions about this playbook
Where do business metrics come from?
From Amplitude, BigQuery, Snowflake, Google Sheets, S3, Datadog, CloudWatch or metrics you push to Costory's API.
How long does this playbook take to set up?
Connecting your billing data and the Costory MCP takes under 30 minutes with Terraform or CloudFormation. The playbook itself takes minutes: pick the scope, the trigger and the Slack channel. The first billing data lands the next day, and the agent starts from there.
Can we adjust what the agent does?
Yes. You choose the trigger, the scope (team, service, environment), the channel and the format, and you can pause or change it at any time.
Does Costory change anything in our cloud accounts?
No. Costory reads billing exports and the metrics you connect, and has no write access to your cloud. Actions it takes create Costory objects only: alerts, reports, dashboards and events. Your team stays in control of every change.
Step-by-step guide in the Costory docs
Related playbooks
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Costory notices
Monthly, or when a unit cost drifts beyond your threshold.
Track cost per customer, per request or per active user
Combine allocated cloud cost with your business and usage metrics to build unit costs that leadership can track over time.
See the playbook
Costory notices
A deploy is followed by a cost change on the same service.
Cost impact of every deploy, from GitHub events
Capture deploys, PR merges and releases from GitHub or your CI/CD pipeline, and see which ones changed cost.
See the playbook
Costory notices
A batch run or live event costs more than usual.
Price bursty workloads with hourly cost granularity
Use hourly cost data to measure bursty jobs, price each event or batch, and connect optimization work to per-event cost.
See the playbook
Put this playbook on call
Included in every plan, from €250/month. 30-day free trial: connect in under 30 minutes, get your first optimization recommendation the next day.
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
Setup
About 30 minutes
Data residency
EU
Access
Read-only on your cloud