MCM-44 — Cloud Cost Calculator

← Back to Pre-Provisioning Cost Estimation overview

As a Platform Engineer,
I want to pick cloud resources and their configuration directly, without creating any workspace or plan,
so that I can build up a cost estimate for a hypothetical architecture — potentially spanning more than one cloud provider — before deciding whether to provision anything at all.

Acceptance Criteria

• A new Cost Calculator section lets a user build a cost estimate without creating or referencing any workspace — independent of the plan/apply flow in MCM-43 — Estimated Cost Before Applying a Workspace Plan.
• The user adds one or more resources to the estimate by choosing a cloud provider, a resource/service type, and its configuration (e.g. instance size, disk size and type, region) — covering whichever providers and resource types the pricing engine's catalogue has data for (today: AWS, Azure, and GCP), not limited to the platform's own provisionable stack catalogue.
• A single estimate can mix resources from more than one cloud provider at once — e.g. an AWS compute resource and a GCP storage resource in the same running total.
• Each added resource shows its own estimated monthly cost, and the calculator shows a running total across all added resources, regardless of how many different providers they come from.
• The user can remove or adjust a resource already added to the estimate, and the total updates accordingly.
• The estimate is shown in the organization's configured currency, using the same currency conversion as MCM-43.
• A resource configuration with no matching price in the pricing catalogue is clearly marked "cost not available", consistent with how MCM-43 handles the same case.
• The estimate assumes continuous (24/7, ~730 hours/month) on-demand usage for each resource unless otherwise stated — the calculator does not model partial usage, spot pricing, or reserved/committed discounts.
• The calculator is a standalone estimation tool for this iteration — it does not create a workspace, stack, or any provisionable configuration from the selections made.

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Technical Design

The Cost Calculator queries the same self-hosted pricing engine as MCM-43 — Estimated Cost Before Applying a Workspace Plan, but directly against its price catalogue using the provider, resource type, and configuration attributes the user selects, rather than through a workspace plan — so an estimate can be built without creating or referencing any workspace, stack, or actual provisioning intent. Because this catalogue isn't filtered down to what the platform can provision, the calculator can offer any provider and resource type the pricing engine has data for — today AWS, Azure, and GCP — and a single estimate can freely mix resources across providers. Each added resource is priced independently and summed into a running total, converted into the organization's configured currency using the same currency conversion capability MCM-43 uses.

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UI / Frontend Changes

• New standalone "Cost Calculator" section, independent of the Workspaces/plan area.
• A resource picker: cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP), resource/service type, and its configuration fields, specific to the resource type chosen.
• An "estimate" panel listing each added resource as its own line item (provider, configuration, and cost), a running total across all of them, and the ability to remove or edit any line item.
• "Cost not available" state per resource, consistent with MCM-43.
• Empty state before any resource has been added.