---
title: Commitments
canonical: "https://cloudmonitor.ai/docs/using-cloudmonitor/reports/commitments/"
description: "Reservations and savings plans in one place: what they save, how well they are used, what expires when, and what to buy next."
---

A commitment is a promise to use a certain amount over a term in exchange for a lower rate. Get them
right and they're the largest single lever on a cloud bill. Get them wrong and you've prepaid for
things you don't use.

This report covers both kinds — a **Reservation** commits to a specific resource type, a
**Savings Plan** commits to a level of spend per hour and is more flexible for a slightly smaller
discount.

## The numbers that matter

**Utilisation** — how much of what you bought you actually consumed. Unused commitment is money
already spent for nothing, so this is the number that catches waste.

**Commitment savings** — list price, or the on-demand equivalent, minus what you actually paid. What
the commitments earned you **vs on-demand rates**.

**Effective savings rate** — those savings as a share of list cost, across the whole portfolio. The
single number for "are commitments working for us?"

Coverage is the counterpart: how much of your eligible usage a commitment covers. Low coverage means
you're paying on-demand for things a commitment could have discounted — the opposite failure to low
utilization, and just as expensive.

:::tip[Utilization and coverage pull against each other]
High utilization with low coverage means you bought too little. High coverage with low utilization
means you bought too much, or the wrong shape. You're aiming for both to be high, and looking at
either alone will mislead you.
:::

## The tabs

The screen carries several views of the same portfolio: the summary, reservations and savings plans
separately, utilization, coverage and recommendations, purchases, and chargeback showing which teams
consumed which commitment.

Each keeps its own saved views, and a link you copy opens on the tab you were on.

## Two ways to count a purchase

Buying a commitment produces one large charge and then months of benefit, so the cost basis matters
more here than almost anywhere else.

- **Billed cost** shows the purchase transactions as invoiced — the cash view.
- **Effective cost** shows the amortized cost of the commitments currently in view, spread across the
  term they cover.

For "what did we pay this month", use billed. For "what is this team's spend", use effective — see
[effective cost vs billed cost](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/effective-vs-billed-cost/).

## Filters

Every global filter applies. Note that virtual tags narrow the resource-level chargeback — which
resources consumed each reservation — rather than the portfolio itself. Commitments don't carry
resource tags of their own; the things consuming them do.

## Before you buy anything

Two habits worth having:

- **Check expiry before renewing.** A commitment that expires mid-period quietly moves that spend
  back to on-demand rates, and the bill goes up without anyone changing anything.
- **Check utilization on what you already own** before buying more. Adding coverage on top of an
  under-used commitment compounds the mistake.