Hourly Cost per CPU Core
Definition
Measures the average cost per CPU core, delivering insight into unit cost per CPU core. Can be improved through reservations, or migrating to instance types with better price/performance.
Formula, as published
Hourly Cost / Number of CPU cores
- Data sources:
- CSP Billing Data and Cloud Console
Calculate it
Example values to start with; replace them with yours.
How to measure it
A unit cost that compares instance families, regions and purchase options on one scale. Use the effective cost, so commitments and their unused part are both in it.
Count physical cores or vCPUs consistently: two vCPUs are one core on most x86 instances and two on most Arm instances.
FOCUS columns: EffectiveCost, ConsumedQuantity, SkuPriceDetails
More Unit Economics KPIs
Definition and formula: Hourly Cost per CPU Core, FinOps KPI library, FinOps Foundation, licensed CC BY 4.0, read 16 Oct 2026. Changed: HTML removed, dashes and British spellings changed, formula split from its data sources and examples. The calculator and the notes are Finitizer’s.
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