Overview
Chargeback without Gateway lets you visualize the cost allocation based on two key metrics:
- Bytes stored: the amount of data stored across all topic partitions (measured in GB-hours).
- Partition count: the number of partitions maintained (measured in partition-hours).
Costs are calculated by multiplying these accumulated metrics by your configured rates (cost per GB per hour for storage, cost per partition per hour for partitions).
You can view data from the perspective of overall cost, storage or number of partitions.
- Overall cost: displays the total dollar cost by adding together the storage and number of partitions
- Storage: shows the bytes stored, also showing the cost of said bytes, and what percentage this cost makes up of the total storage cost across all items for the selected period
- Number of partitions: shows the partition count, also showing the cost of said partitions, and what percentage this cost makes up of the total number of partitions cost across all items for the selected period
You can view cost data at different levels of granularity:
- Cluster: view costs grouped by Kafka cluster
- Application: view costs grouped by application
- Application Instance: view costs grouped by application instance (filtered by selected cluster or application)
- Topic: view costs grouped by topic (filtered by selected cluster or application instance)
Permissions
Access to Chargeback is controlled by platform-level permissions. There are two permission levels:
- can manage Chargeback: can configure cost rates
- can view Chargeback: can view metrics only
Metrics view permission requirements
| View by | Required permission |
|---|
| Topic | Can view Chargeback |
| Cluster | Can view Chargeback |
| Application | Can view Chargeback |
| Application instance | Can view Chargeback |
By default, platform admins will have all the permissions.
Cost rates permission requirements
| Action | Required permission |
|---|
| View cost rates | Can manage Chargeback |
| Configure cost rates | Can manage Chargeback |
Using Chargeback without Gateway
The measured period can be changed from 7D, 30D, 6M, 12M or YTD (Year To Date). The view can be changed per cluster, application, application instance or topic using the view dropdown.
You can see the topic cost per hour and cost of bytes stored per GB hour for each cluster connected to Console.
You can easily update the cost rates for one or more clusters in this same section.
How metrics are calculated
Once metrics are aggregated for the selected time period, Console calculates costs using the configured cost rates.
Cost:
If cost is not set, will be defaulted to 0. The maximum allowed cost for each is 9.99999999.
Storage
Number of partitions
Overall Cost
(total_byte_hours / 1,073,741,824) × bytes_stored_per_hour_cost
// Where `1,073,741,824` is 1 GB in bytes (1024³).
total_partition_hours × partition_count_per_hour_cost
storage_cost + partition_cost
percentage = (item_cost_for_period_and_view / total_cost_for_period_and_view) × 100
| Tab | Calculation |
|---|
| Storage | bytes = total_byte_hours / hours_in_period |
| Number of partitions | partitions = total_partition_hours / hours_in_period |
- Average:
7,200 / 744 ≈ 9.68 → Average of ~10 partitions throughout the period
The accuracy of metrics depends on the collection frequency. A shorter interval (e.g., 30 minutes) captures more granular usage patterns, while a longer interval (e.g., two hours) may miss short-lived spikes.The default frequency is one hour.Note that deleting a cluster will remove related Chargeback metrics.
Export Chargeback data
To facilitate external analysis and reporting, the data shown in the table can be exported as a CSV file.
To export the data, click Export all at the top right of the graph.
The default exported file name will be Chargeback_<startDate>_<endDate>_<activeTabName>.csv.
1. Specify what data to export
The exported data will depend on the currently selected tab:
- the Overall cost tab will export the cost values
- the Storage tab will export the cost values of bytes stored
- the Number of partitions tab will export the cost values of partition count
2. Select the time period
The exported data will be formatted based on the selected time period:
- 7D or 30D will export the relevant data split by days
- 6M, 12M or YTD will export the relevant data split by months
