Updated 25 October 2026 · Published by Zoorik
Showback is a report that splits your cloud bill by team, application or cost center. The showback meaning is in the name: each team’s cost is shown back to it, with no charge.
An example from AWS
In AWS’s example, the infrastructure engineering team learns its share of last month’s spend. A showback model is how you split the bill, and AWS describes three common ones, from least to most effort:
- By account: one line per AWS account.
- By team or business unit: each team’s accounts are grouped together.
- By tag: a label on each resource names its team, and a tag counts only after you activate it for cost allocation.
One node in a shared Kubernetes cluster runs many teams’ pods, so a tag on it can’t split the cost. That takes Kubernetes cost allocation. On Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), see AKS cost analysis.
Showback vs chargeback
Showback only reports each team’s share. Chargeback takes that share out of the team’s budget, through internal accounting.
Microsoft suggests most organizations start with showback and add chargeback last, after cost allocation.
Why it matters for your bill
- A report alone doesn’t reduce your node and disk cost.
- Coral rebalances CPU and memory requests on AKS and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) to match real use. With requests that match use, the same pods fit on fewer nodes.
- Amoeba moves a virtual machine’s data disks onto one pool sized to your data, then rightsizes it autonomously.
- The free assessment works out your own figure.
Read next: AKS cost analysis: what the add-on shows and what it doesn’t
Sources: AWS, “Cost allocation tags” (opens in a new tab); AWS, “Building a cost allocation strategy” (opens in a new tab); AWS, “COST06-BP04 Consider using shared resources” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Invoicing and chargeback” (opens in a new tab).