Databricks 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 and drill down to the specific resources driving spend.
Period-over-period comparison and trend analysis now live on the separate Cost Changes page. Legacy Cost Explorer URLs with tab=comparison or tab=trends redirect there, and tab=attribution redirects to Cost Allocation.
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.
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?”
Filters
Section titled “Filters”All Cost Explorer tabs share the global filter bar in the page header:
| 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) |
| Organization | Limit to specific org units, departments, or teams |
| Tag | Limit to resources with specific Databricks tag keys and values |
| Cost mode | Total, Databricks Only, Cloud Only, or Breakdown (see Cost display below) |
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 a specific workspace and team to see that team’s spend within that workspace. To narrow by workload type (Jobs, Pipelines, SQL Warehouses, Serving Endpoints), use the By Type grouping preset on the Breakdown tab or the Matrix tab’s Workloads mode rather than a filter.
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 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.
Legacy deep links are preserved: tab=comparison and tab=trends redirect to Cost Changes, while tab=attribution redirects to Cost Allocation.
Cost display
Section titled “Cost display”Like the Overview Dashboard, the Cost Explorer supports the cost mode toggle:
- Total Cost — Combined Databricks + cloud infrastructure cost
- Databricks Cost — Databricks costs only
- Cloud Cost — Cloud infrastructure cost only
- Cost Breakdown — Side-by-side Databricks 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
- Cost Changes — Period-over-period comparisons and trends
- Cost Allocation — Attribution quality, rules, projects, and tags
- Budgets — Track spend against budget targets
- Metrics & Aggregations — How the underlying cost data is computed