> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.north.cloud/docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.north.cloud/docs/features/coststreams.md).

# Coststreams

Learn more about one of our most powerful feature Coststreams.

<figure><img src="https://1793025303-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FeLw7hj1pxE38VmG1sYVW%2Fuploads%2F5qpGlsL9Iuv24lGfkhvb%2FScreenshot%202025-11-09%20at%204.22.15%E2%80%AFPM.png?alt=media&#x26;token=87efdc76-f2fb-41d3-b845-62aa6ece1fcc" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Coststreams puts you in control of your cloud spend through two core capabilities: powerful, flexible visibility and simple, precise cost allocation. With just a few clicks, you can subdivide complex and large datasets within your cloud environment, creating real-time, dynamic groupings of your spend based on any attribute you choose—teams, business units, environments, projects, cloud provider, or fully custom tags. These groupings update live as your cloud accounts evolve, letting you isolate, track, and manage subsets of spend exactly the way your business requires.

The UI makes it easy to slice and dice spending, create groupings or sets of groupings, and assign them to business units. Each business unit can then have its own set of company users, enabling you to allocate costs accurately, assign tailored budgets, and control access. North's AI Budget Insights monitor historical spend to assess your budget health and notifies you proactively if your stream or business unit budgeting is off track or if thresholds are exceeded. You can drill into spend analytics at any granularity—from daily to monthly—to observe trends and optimize operations.

This flexibility empowers organizations to analyze and manage spend intelligently:

* **For smaller companies:** Even with simple account structures, tangled shared resources and services make cost separation painful. Cost Streams lets you untangle and allocate shared costs, so every dollar spent is tracked to its true business purpose.
* **For larger organizations:** Complex, multi-account, multi-region, and multi-service landscapes make traditional cost tracking unmanageable. Cost Streams makes it easy to split, regroup, and assign accountability—so teams and business owners are responsible for their usage and alerted proactively to significant changes or overspending.

Additional features include automated showback of costs to any group, and the ability to send pre-populated PDF reports summarizing spend and allocations for key stakeholders.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Streams are not limited to cloud spend.** If you have connected a Cost Loop, you can include its spend in a view alongside your cloud accounts, and allocate it through the same model. Select the loops you want when you create the view. Splitting a loop by service breaks AI spend down to the model, and splitting a model by usage type separates cached input, input, and output cost.

See [Cost Loops](/docs/features/cost-loops.md).
{% endhint %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/PSa2d89rQLla0kXCcVgC" %}
[Getting Started](/docs/features/coststreams/getting-started.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/z9SwpQOcSuGPTC6vn42e" %}
[Business Units](/docs/features/coststreams/business-units.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/faKcklgCIgw958anlMu8" %}
[Cost Labels](/docs/features/coststreams/cost-labels.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="/pages/RAOKYnbahhH7Oh3KvMPK" %}
[Cost Units](/docs/features/coststreams/cost-units.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}


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