The Chargeback Model for Observability Cost

Make teams see what they spend on observability. The chargeback model, the dashboard, and the behaviour it changes.

Attribute spend

Tag every metric, log line, and span with team_id at ingestion. Sum costs per tag monthly.

Tag enforcement at the collector. Untagged data goes to a 'shared' bucket the platform team owns.

Dashboard

Per team: monthly observability spend, cost per metric, top cardinality contributors.

Trends month-over-month. Spikes are conversations; growth without service changes is a leak.

Behaviour change

Teams suddenly care about cardinality. The conversation moves from 'add more metrics' to 'do we still need metric X?'

Cost falls 20-40% in the first quarter for most teams. The visibility itself drives optimisation.