Quickstart

Connect your first cloud account and see your first forecast in under 10 minutes.

Connecting your first cloud account

This guide walks you through connecting AWS, GCP, or Azure to Finopscraft. Each provider takes 2 to 3 minutes. You only need to do this once per account. All access is read-only.

Step 1: Create a Finopscraft account

1
Sign up at finopscraft.com/login/register

Enter your work email and create a password. No credit card required to start the 14-day trial.

2
Navigate to Settings, then Cloud Accounts

From the main dashboard, go to Settings in the top-right menu, then select Cloud Accounts. Click Add account.

3
Select your cloud provider

Choose AWS, GCP, or Azure. The setup flow will guide you through the provider-specific steps below.

AWS setup

Finopscraft uses the AWS Cost Explorer API. You will create an IAM policy with read-only billing permissions and provide the resulting access key.

Required IAM permissions

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ce:GetCostAndUsage",
        "ce:GetCostForecast",
        "ce:GetDimensionValues",
        "ce:GetTags"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Create this policy in the AWS IAM console, attach it to a new IAM user, and generate an access key. Paste the access key ID and secret into the Finopscraft setup form. Cost Explorer must be enabled on the account (it enables automatically on first API call in most regions).

GCP setup

Finopscraft reads from your GCP Billing export to BigQuery. You must first enable the export if it is not already active.

1
Enable Billing export to BigQuery

In Google Cloud Console, go to Billing, then Billing export. Enable the standard usage cost export and select or create a BigQuery dataset. Note the project ID and dataset name.

2
Create a service account with BigQuery Data Viewer

In IAM, create a service account and grant it the roles/bigquery.dataViewer role scoped to the billing export dataset. Download the JSON key file.

3
Upload the key to Finopscraft

In the Finopscraft GCP setup form, upload the JSON key file and enter your project ID and dataset name. Finopscraft will validate access and begin ingesting historical data (up to 90 days back).

Azure setup

Finopscraft uses the Azure Cost Management API. You will create a service principal with Cost Management Reader access.

1
Register an app in Azure Active Directory

In the Azure portal, go to App registrations and register a new application. Create a client secret and note the application (client) ID, directory (tenant) ID, and client secret value.

2
Assign Cost Management Reader role

In Access control (IAM) at your subscription scope, add a role assignment: Cost Management Reader, assigned to your new app registration. This grants read-only billing access.

3
Enter credentials in Finopscraft

Paste the tenant ID, client ID, client secret, and subscription ID into the Azure setup form. Finopscraft will validate the connection and start ingesting billing data.

After connecting

Initial data ingestion takes up to 2 hours depending on the size of your billing history. Once complete, Finopscraft will display your first forecast on the dashboard. The weekly forecast digest will be delivered the following Monday morning.

Questions during setup: contact us or email [email protected].