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ACE (Azure Cost Estimator) - automated cost estimations for ARM Templates, Bicep and Terraform

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ACE (Azure Cost Estimator)

Automated cost estimation for your Azure infrastructure. Works with ARM Templates, Bicep and Terraform.

ACE + Topaz

ACE's estimation engine is becoming a core part of Topaz — a single-binary Azure emulator. When used through Topaz, you can estimate the cost of resources already deployed to your local environment without leaving your machine.

ACE remains a fully standalone CLI tool and NuGet library (TheCloudTheory.AzureCostEstimator.Core) for teams that want to integrate cost estimation directly into their own pipelines or applications, independent of Topaz.

What is ACE?

ACE (Azure Cost Estimator) lets you estimate the cost of an Azure deployment before it happens. It reads your IaC template — ARM, Bicep, or Terraform — runs a What-If analysis, calls the Azure Retail Prices API, and gives you a cost breakdown down to the individual resource.

ACE follows the concept of running cost as an architecture fitness function: make it a gate in your CI/CD pipeline and get immediate feedback on cost impact before any change reaches the cloud.

Why ACE?

Works before deployment — estimate cost from a template, not a running environment
Covers 49 Azure services (~92 resource types) — ARM, Bicep, and Terraform all supported
Always fresh data — live calls to the Azure Retail Prices API, no stale pricing databases
Delta reporting — shows the cost difference between current and proposed infrastructure
CI/CD gate — optionally fail the pipeline when estimates exceed a configured limit
17 currencies — including USD, EUR, GBP, and more
No third-party services — everything goes through Microsoft APIs; no proxies, no accounts
Flexible auth — Azure.Identity picks up CLI, environment, managed identity, and more
Usage patterns — feed custom usage data to refine estimates beyond defaults
Multiple deployment scopes — resource group, subscription, management group, tenant

Getting started

Check the wiki for installation, usage, and all available options.

For CI/CD integration, see the dedicated GitHub Action.

Using ACE as a library

The core estimation engine is published as a NuGet package:

dotnet add package TheCloudTheory.AzureCostEstimator.Core

var service = new EstimationService();
var result = await service.EstimateAsync(whatIfChanges);
Console.WriteLine($"Total cost: {result.TotalCost} {result.Currency}");

Services support

Services not listed are considered TBD. The table below reflects the latest commit, which may be ahead of the most recent release.

Service	Support level	Terraform	Notes
AKS	Stable	✅	VMSS agent pools only
APIM	Stable	✅
App Configuration	Stable	✅
Application Gateway	Stable	✅
Application Insights	Stable	✅	Classic mode; no Enterprise Nodes or Multi-step Web Test
Analysis Services	Stable	✅
ASR	Stable	✅	No recovery to customer-owned sites
Automation Account	Stable	✅	Process Automation only
Azure App Service	Stable	✅	App Service Plans (no Isolated tiers) + Functions (Consumption / Premium / ASP)
Azure Firewall	Stable	❌
Availability Set	Stable	❌
Backup	Stable	❌
Bastion	Stable	❌
Bot Service	Stable	❌
Chaos Studio	Stable	❌
Cognitive Search	In development	❌	No Document Cracking / Semantic Search / Custom Entity Skills
Confidential Ledger	Stable	❌
Container Apps	Stable	❌
Container Registry	Stable	✅
Cosmos DB	In development	❌	Single-region writes with manual throughput only
Data Factory	In development	❌	No IR or SSIS
Event Hub	Stable	❌
Event Grid	Stable	❌
Health Bot	Stable	❌
Key Vault	Stable	❌	No Azure Dedicated HSM
Log Analytics	In development	❌	No commitment tiers or log retention
Logic Apps	In development	❌	No ISE scale units
Maria DB	Stable	❌
Monitor	In development	❌	No alert frequency or metrics count
Network Interface	Stable	❌
Network Security Group	Stable	❌
PostgreSQL	Stable	❌	No Hyperscale (Cosmos DB)
Public IP Address	Stable	❌
Public IP Address Prefixes	Stable	❌
Redis	Stable	❌
Sentinel	In development	❌	No commitment tiers
Service Bus	Stable	❌	No Hybrid Connections or WCF Relay
SignalR	Stable	❌
SQL Database	Stable	❌
SQL Server Elastic Pools	Stable	❌
Static Web App	Stable	❌
Storage Account	In development	❌	StorageV2 only (no File Service or Data Lake Storage)
Stream Analytics	Stable	❌	Edge requires separate estimation
Time Series	Stable	❌
Virtual Machine	Stable	❌	Ax, Bx, and Dx families
VMSS	Stable	❌	Same VM families as Virtual Machines
Virtual Network	Stable	✅
VPN Gateway	Stable	❌

Contributions

Contributions are more than welcome!

Acknowledgements

TOC generator - https://ecotrust-canada.github.io/markdown-toc/
MVP.css - https://github.com/andybrewer/mvp/

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