Track cloud credits and runway
Follow credits received and consumed per provider and estimate when they run out, so the switch to paid usage is planned.
Runs in
Claude · Slack
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
How many months of credits do we have left on each provider at the current burn rate?
AWS credits: €61k remaining at a €9.8k/month burn, about 6 months. GCP credits run out in 7 weeks; after that, expect roughly €14k/month on GCP, 70% of it from the ML team's GPU training.
Founders plan the switch to paid usage.
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
Monthly, and when runway drops below three months.
Costory investigates
01
Separate credits
Credits appear as their own lines in normalized billing.
02
Track consumption
Credits used per month and per provider.
03
Estimate runway
Months left at the current burn.
04
Report
A monthly credits update for the founders.
Where you see it
Claude
You decide
Founders plan the switch to paid usage.
Why it matters
Startups burn through cloud credits faster than expected and discover the real bill the month it lands.
Who it’s for
Startup CTOs, founders, finance
Where it runs
Claude · Slack
What you get
What lands in front of your team
Credits runway tracked
Received, used and remaining.
A runway estimate
When paid usage starts.
No surprise bill
Plan the post-credits budget.
Sources and assistants
What it connects
Data sources
Example prompts
Or drive it yourself
Runway
How many months of credits do we have left on each provider at the current burn rate?
FAQ
Questions about this playbook
How are forecasts generated?
Costory forecasts end-of-month values for each budget line with TimesFM by Google, and alerts can use actual or forecasted thresholds.
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
Run these alongside it
Costory notices
The forecast for a team moves materially.
End-of-month cost forecast per team, before the invoice
See where each team will land at month end, based on a forecast model, and investigate drifts while there's still time.
See the playbook
Costory notices
A team's forecast crosses a budget threshold.
Team budgets with forecast-based alerts
Monthly budgets per team, with Slack or email alerts when actual spend or the end-of-month forecast crosses a threshold.
See the playbook
Costory notices
Budget season starts.
Build next year's cloud budget from allocated history
Start budget season from 12 months of allocated cost per team, growth trends and known changes, with every version tracked.
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