OCI cost and usage cheat sheet - answering \"what did we spend and where\" with the Usage API and cost reports

#Permissions

Reading cost data needs a tenancy-level policy such as:

Allow group FinOps to read usage-report in tenancy
Allow group FinOps to read usage-budgets in tenancy

Cost reports are read through a special cross-tenancy policy (endorse/define). Copy it exactly from the OCI documentation page "Accessing Cost and Usage Reports".

#Usage API from the CLI

Use the tenancy OCID as --tenant-id. Times are UTC and must align to the granularity: midnight for DAILY, the first of the month for MONTHLY.

Cost per service, last month:

oci usage-api usage-summary request-summarized-usages \
  --tenant-id $TENANCY \
  --time-usage-started 2026-09-01T00:00:00Z --time-usage-ended 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z \
  --granularity MONTHLY --query-type COST \
  --group-by '["service"]' \
  --query "sort_by(data.items,&\"computed-amount\")[-10:].{service:service,cost:\"computed-amount\",cur:currency}" -o table

Daily cost for a spike hunt:

oci usage-api usage-summary request-summarized-usages --tenant-id $TENANCY \
  --time-usage-started 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z --time-usage-ended 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z \
  --granularity DAILY --query-type COST --group-by '["service"]' \
  --query "data.items[].{day:\"time-usage-started\",service:service,cost:\"computed-amount\"}" -o table

By compartment:

oci usage-api usage-summary request-summarized-usages --tenant-id $TENANCY \
  --time-usage-started 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z --time-usage-ended 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z \
  --granularity MONTHLY --query-type COST \
  --group-by '["compartmentPath"]' --compartment-depth 3

By cost-tracking tag (the tag must be a defined tag marked as a cost-tracking tag):

oci usage-api usage-summary request-summarized-usages --tenant-id $TENANCY \
  --time-usage-started 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z --time-usage-ended 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z \
  --granularity MONTHLY --query-type COST \
  --group-by-tag '[{"namespace":"Finance","key":"CostCenter"}]'

Usage quantity rather than cost (for example OCPU hours):

... --query-type USAGE --group-by '["service","skuName","unit"]'

Useful --group-by values include service, skuName, compartmentName, compartmentPath, region, resourceId and tagNamespace/tagKey/tagValue. Check --help for the full list in your CLI version.

Tip

Grouping by resourceId for a whole month returns a lot of rows. Filter to one service first with --filter (JSON), or use the cost reports below.

#Find the expensive resources

oci usage-api usage-summary request-summarized-usages --tenant-id $TENANCY \
  --time-usage-started 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z --time-usage-ended 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z \
  --granularity MONTHLY --query-type COST --group-by '["resourceId","service"]' \
  --filter '{"operator":"AND","dimensions":[{"key":"service","value":"COMPUTE"}]}' \
  --query "sort_by(data.items,&\"computed-amount\")[-15:].{res:\"resource-id\",cost:\"computed-amount\"}" -o table

Service names in filters must match the names returned by an unfiltered query. Run one first to see the exact spelling.

#Detailed cost reports (CSV)

OCI writes detailed cost and usage reports as gzipped CSV files to an Oracle-owned bucket you can read:

oci os object list --namespace-name bling --bucket-name $TENANCY \
  --prefix reports/cost-csv/ --all --query "data[-5:].name" -o table

oci os object get --namespace-name bling --bucket-name $TENANCY \
  --name reports/cost-csv/<file>.csv.gz --file cost.csv.gz

Load them into a database, a spreadsheet, or Autonomous Database for trend analysis. The columns include the resource ID, compartment, tags, SKU, quantity and cost.

#Console shortcuts

#Budgets from the CLI

oci budgets budget create --compartment-id $TENANCY \
  --amount 5000 --reset-period MONTHLY --target-type COMPARTMENT \
  --targets '["'$APP_COMPARTMENT'"]' --display-name app-monthly

oci budgets alert-rule create --budget-id <budget-ocid> --type FORECAST \
  --threshold 90 --threshold-type PERCENTAGE --recipients "finops@example.com"

#Common reasons for a jump

#Checklist

• Read policy for the FinOps group
• Monthly cost by service and compartment reviewed
• Cost-tracking tags defined and applied
• Budgets with forecast alerts per compartment
• Cost reports exported for trend analysis