Cost Explorer
The Cost Explorer is LakeSentry’s primary tool for ad-hoc cost investigation. While the Overview Dashboard gives you a summary, the Cost Explorer lets you slice costs across multiple dimensions, compare time periods, and drill down to the specific resources driving spend.
The Cost Explorer is organized into tabs, each offering a different view of the same underlying cost data.
Breakdown
Section titled “Breakdown”The default view. Shows cost as a hierarchical bar chart grouped by a dimension you choose, with a detail panel below showing the selected group’s cost breakdown.
Available grouping presets:
| Preset | Hierarchy |
|---|---|
| By Workspace | Workspace → Work Unit |
| By Type | Type → Work Unit |
| By Organization | Org Unit → Department → Team → Principal |
| By Project | Project → Team → Principal |
Switch presets using the dropdown above the chart. Click any bar to select it and see its detail panel, including cost breakdown and child items.
Compute Types
Section titled “Compute Types”A dedicated breakdown showing Compute vs. Service cost categories with daily trends. Includes sub-breakdowns by compute type (Jobs, All Purpose, SQL, etc.), service type (DLT, Model Serving, etc.), usage type (Compute Time, Storage, Network), and cloud instance type.
Principals
Section titled “Principals”Cost grouped by the users and service principals who ran workloads. Each row shows:
- Principal name, type (user, service principal, or group), and workspace count
- Total spend for the period with cost trend
- Query count and request count
- Client application breakdown
- Anomaly count (audit events)
- Last active timestamp
This view helps answer “who is spending the most?” and is useful for chargeback discussions. Summary charts show the top 10 spenders and aggregate spend trend over time.
Tables
Section titled “Tables”Cost attributed to Delta tables through the work units (jobs, pipelines) that write to them. Each row shows the table name, total cost, number of associated work units, last access time, and a staleness status indicator. Summary stats highlight stale table cost and unused table count.
Comparison
Section titled “Comparison”Period-over-period comparison showing cost changes. Choose a comparison type (previous period, same period last month, or same period last year) and see:
- Total cost for each period
- Absolute and percentage change
- Top cost increases and decreases by work unit
- New and discontinued work units between periods
- A diverging bar chart showing the largest changes by magnitude
- Configurable thresholds to filter out noise (minimum absolute and percentage change)
Matrix
Section titled “Matrix”A pivot-table style view that crosses two dimensions, with two available modes:
- Workloads — Workspace (rows) vs. Workload Type (columns: Jobs, Pipelines, SQL Warehouses, Model Serving, Other). Click any cell to see details.
- Principals — Principal (rows) vs. Workspace (columns). Click a row to navigate to that principal’s detail page.
Each cell shows the cost, and cells are heat-mapped by magnitude. The Matrix tab is useful for answering questions like “which workspaces have the highest job costs?” or “which principals are active across multiple workspaces?”
Trends
Section titled “Trends”Week-over-week trend analysis showing aggregate cost trajectory over an 8-week context window. Summary stats include:
- Total cost for the selected period
- Weekly average cost
- Period-over-period change (percentage)
- Latest week-over-week change
The trend chart includes a trend line, average line, and anomaly markers. If the current week is in progress, a projected full-week cost is shown based on weekday/weekend spending patterns. A weekly breakdown table lists each week’s cost, WoW change, 12-week moving average, and deviation from average.
Attribution
Section titled “Attribution”Cost grouped by attribution path — showing how much of your spend is Attributed (by rule, by user, or by resource), Shared & Overhead (shared costs and platform overhead), or Unallocated. See Cost Attribution & Confidence Tiers for what each category means.
This tab shows your overall attribution rate with a progress bar, a detailed cost breakdown table by attribution path, and a list of top unallocated resources. You can create attribution rules directly from unallocated resources to assign them to teams. A high percentage of “Unallocated” spend suggests you need more attribution rules.
Filters
Section titled “Filters”All Cost Explorer tabs share a common filter bar:
| Filter | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Time range | The analysis period (presets or custom date range), managed by the global time range selector |
| Workspace | Limit to specific Databricks workspaces (dropdown with multi-select) |
| Type | Limit to specific workload types: Jobs, Pipelines, SQL Warehouses, Serving Endpoints (dropdown with multi-select) |
Additionally, deep links from other pages (e.g., budgets) can pre-set organizational filters — Team, Department, Org Unit, and date range overrides — which appear as removable badge chips in the filter bar.
Filters can be combined. For example, filter to “SQL Warehouses” in a specific workspace to see warehouse costs across that workspace.
Active filters are displayed as chips in the filter bar. Click the × on any chip to remove it.
Drill-down navigation
Section titled “Drill-down navigation”The Breakdown tab’s hierarchical bar chart supports drill-down navigation. Click any bar to zoom into that group and see its children. The drill-down levels depend on the grouping preset — for example, with “By Workspace,” you drill from workspace to individual work units; with “By Organization,” you drill from org unit to department to team to principal.
Each drill-down step adds a breadcrumb to the navigation bar, so you can step back to any level. Clicking a bar also opens a detail panel showing the selected item’s cost breakdown and children.
Deep linking
Section titled “Deep linking”The Cost Explorer supports URL-based deep linking. Filters, grouping presets, date ranges, and the active tab are all encoded in URL parameters, so you can share a specific view with colleagues or bookmark it for later. Other pages (such as Budgets) link directly into the Cost Explorer with pre-applied filters and grouping.
Cost display
Section titled “Cost display”Like the Overview Dashboard, the Cost Explorer supports the cost mode toggle:
- Total Cost — Combined DBU + cloud infrastructure cost
- DBU Cost — Databricks DBU charges only
- Cloud Cost — Cloud infrastructure cost only
- Cost Breakdown — Side-by-side DBU and cloud split
The cost mode selection persists across tabs within the Cost Explorer.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Overview Dashboard — High-level cost summary
- Budgets — Track spend against budget targets
- Cost Attribution & Confidence Tiers — How costs are attributed to teams
- Metrics & Aggregations — How the underlying cost data is computed