If you're serious about understanding your Azure spend, you need to get your cost data out of the portal and into a format you can actually work with. Here's how to do it properly.
Why Export Cost Data?
The Azure portal's Cost Management blade is useful for quick checks, but it has limitations:
- Hard to share with stakeholders who don't have Azure access
- Limited filtering and analysis options
- Can't easily compare across time periods
- No way to apply your own business logic
Exporting your data lets you build custom reports, feed it into Power BI, or hand it to your FinOps team for proper analysis.
Method 1: Manual Export (Quick and Dirty)
For a one-off analysis:
- Go to Cost Management + Billing in the Azure portal
- Select your scope (subscription, management group, or resource group)
- Click Cost analysis
- Set your date range and any filters
- Click Download → Download data
This gives you a CSV file with your cost data. Simple, but you'll need to do this manually each time.
Method 2: Scheduled Exports (Recommended)
For ongoing visibility, set up automated exports:
- Go to Cost Management + Billing → Exports
- Click Add
- Configure:
- Name: Something descriptive like
monthly-cost-export - Export type: Daily export of month-to-date costs (or actual costs for historical)
- Storage account: Where to store the files
- Container: Create one called
cost-exports - Directory: Optional subfolder structure
- Name: Something descriptive like
- Set the schedule (daily is usually best for FinOps)
- Click Create
The export will now run automatically and dump CSV files into your storage account.
What's in the Export?
The exported CSV contains everything you need:
- Date - When the cost was incurred
- ResourceId - Full ARM resource ID
- ResourceName - Human-readable name
- ResourceType - The Azure resource type
- ResourceGroup - Which RG it belongs to
- MeterCategory/MeterSubCategory - What type of consumption
- Cost - The actual cost
- Tags - Any tags applied to the resource
Tips for Better Exports
Tag your resources - The export includes tags, so if you've tagged resources with cost centre, environment, or project, you can slice the data much more effectively.
Use management groups - If you have multiple subscriptions, export at the management group level to get everything in one file.
Keep historical data - Azure only retains detailed cost data for 13 months. Export and archive your data if you need longer history.
Consider the API - For programmatic access, the Cost Management API gives you more flexibility than exports. We often use this for automated FinOps reporting.
What Next?
Once you have the data, you can:
- Import into Power BI for dashboards
- Analyse in Excel with pivot tables
- Feed into your own FinOps tooling
- Share with us for a free savings snapshot
The key is getting visibility. You can't optimise what you can't measure.
Need help making sense of your Azure costs? We offer a free savings snapshot that identifies quick wins and optimisation opportunities.