Price Lookup

Look up cloud resource pricing without needing existing infrastructure code. Supports any resource type that Terraform and Infracost support across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Setup

Important: Verify the Infracost CLI is installed and the user is authenticated before running any price lookups.

1. Check the CLI is on the path:

   infracost --version
   

   If this fails, inform the user that they need to install the Infracost CLI by following the instructions at https://www.infracost.io/docs/features/get_started/.

2. Check the user is logged in:

   infracost auth whoami
   

   If this reports that the user is not authenticated, ask them to run infracost auth login in a separate terminal window and let you know once it completes. Do not attempt to run the login command yourself — it is interactive.

Workflow

1. Run Infracost

Pipe the Terraform configuration directly into infracost price. This command reads Terraform from stdin, analyzes it, and prints a human-readable cost summary to stdout, followed by suggested inspect commands for drilling deeper. Temporary files are created and cleaned up automatically.

Pass the global --json flag if you need the raw JSON output instead — for example, when piping into another tool. The same --json flag also switches log output to JSON and works on scan and inspect.

infracost price << 'EOF'
provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "m5.xlarge"

  root_block_device {
    volume_size = 100
    volume_type = "gp3"
  }
}
EOF

Rules for writing the Terraform:

• Minimal config only — no backends, no variable files, no outputs, no data sources. Just a provider block and the resource(s).
• Include attributes that affect pricing — instance type, storage size/type, engine version, throughput, IOPS, etc. These are the knobs that change the price, so they must be present.
• Use the user’s requested configuration — if they ask for “m5.xlarge with 100GB gp3”, write exactly that. If they ask generically (“how much does an RDS instance cost?”), pick reasonable defaults and clearly state what you chose.
• Set the region — use the region the user asks for, or default to us-east-1 and mention it.
• Multiple resources are fine — if the user asks about several resource types, put them all in the same file.
• Use realistic names — name resources descriptively (e.g., aws_instance.web_server not aws_instance.example) so the output is easier to read.

Currency: If the user requests pricing in a non-USD currency, set the INFRACOST_CLI_CURRENCY environment variable when running the command. For example:

INFRACOST_CLI_CURRENCY=EUR infracost price << 'EOF'
...
EOF

Use standard ISO 4217 currency codes (e.g., EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, AUD). If the user doesn’t specify a currency, default to USD.

2. Inspect the results

price already prints a summary, but you can drill in further with inspect. Results are cached, so you don’t need to redirect output or pass --file.

# Summary overview (same shape as the default price output)
infracost inspect --summary

# Detailed cost breakdown, hiding free resources
infracost inspect --costs-only

# Top expensive resources
infracost inspect --top 5

# Every resource sorted by cost (no row limit)
infracost inspect --group-by resource

Presenting Results

Present pricing in a clear, structured way:

• Lead with the monthly cost — this is what the user cares about most
• Break down cost components — show what makes up the total (compute, storage, data transfer, etc.)
• Call out usage-based costs — note that some costs depend on actual usage (requests, data transferred, etc.) and the estimates use typical defaults. Be explicit about what assumptions were made.
• Compare when asked — if the user wants to compare configurations (e.g., m5.xlarge vs m5.2xlarge), create both resources and present a side-by-side table
• Include FinOps recommendations — if Infracost flags any policies (e.g., “use GP3 instead of GP2”, “consider Graviton”), highlight those with potential savings
• Mention the region — pricing varies by region, so always state which region was used

Example presentation

AWS RDS MySQL — db.r5.xlarge, 100GB gp3 Region: us-east-1

Component	Monthly Cost
Instance (on-demand)	$365.00
Storage (100GB gp3)	$11.50
Total	$376.50

Usage-based costs (estimated):

• I/O requests: ~$X/mo based on typical usage

Savings opportunity: Consider Graviton (db.r6g.xlarge) for ~20% savings (~$73/mo).

Important Guidelines

• Do not commit any generated Terraform files — they are throwaway.
• Do not modify the CLI source code — this skill is for using the CLI.
• If infracost scan prompts for login, ask the user to run infracost auth login in a separate terminal window first.
• If the user asks about a resource type you’re unsure of the Terraform resource name for, look it up rather than guessing — an incorrect resource type will produce no pricing data.