METHODOLOGY
Cost data should show what is known — and what is not.
CostNerve is built around a simple rule: financial precision must not be invented. Provider billing evidence, reconstructed estimates and attribution confidence remain distinct so engineering teams can act on trustworthy information.
Exact provider cost
A provider-reported monetary amount is preserved with its source and currency. It is not silently replaced by a modelled estimate.
Estimated cost
When only usage is available, a cost may be reconstructed from documented pricing and usage evidence. The result remains explicitly estimated and should retain its calculation inputs.
Unallocated spend
If there is not enough evidence to associate cost with a project, customer or workload, the cost stays Unallocated. Visible uncertainty is preferred to false attribution.
Correlation is not causation
Deployments, commits, traffic, token volume and resource changes can be useful evidence around a cost movement. They help narrow an investigation, but correlation alone is not presented as proof of causation.
Read-only first
Provider connections start from a read-only posture. Any cost-control write action is a separate capability and should be explicit, scoped, reversible and audit logged.
Content review
Cost troubleshooting guides are reviewed against current first-party provider documentation when a provider-specific billing primitive is discussed. Provider pricing and product behavior can change, so the provider remains the source of truth.