Cost estimate

An app’s Resources tab shows what it might cost per month under three reference pricing profiles. Look for What this would cost elsewhere, folded at the bottom of the Optimise panel.

levelrail-cli apps cost NAME

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" https://levelrail.example.com/api/v1/apps/NAME/cost-estimate

Levelrail Resources tab with a resource suggestion and a what-this-would-cost-elsewhere estimate

This is an estimate, not a real bill. It never calls a live pricing API and does not reflect what your own hardware costs. It shows roughly what the same CPU and memory would cost under typical metered cloud pricing, so you have something to compare against.

What it is based on

CPU and memory are resolved independently, in this order:

Declared: the app has a memory or CPU limit in its resources: block (or set through the API or CLI).
Observed: no limit, but enough usage telemetry exists. The estimate uses the p95 of CPU and memory over the last 7 days, the same window the resource recommendation feature uses.
Unavailable: neither exists yet. You still get a response, priced at each provider’s minimum, and the basis fields say there is nothing real behind the number.

The formula

For each reference provider:

cpu_cost    = vcpu_cores * cpu_per_core_usd
memory_cost = memory_gib * memory_per_gib_usd
total       = max(cpu_cost + memory_cost, minimum_usd)

The formula has no tiered discounts, sustained-use pricing, egress or storage costs.

Reference providers

Three profiles ship by default (defined in internal/costestimate/costestimate.go). The numbers are round, not any real provider’s rate card.

Key	Represents	$/vCPU-core/mo	$/GiB/mo	Minimum/mo
`vm`	A bare unmanaged cloud VM	4	4	4
`managed_vm`	A managed VM with backups and support bundled in	8	6	10
`paas`	Metered container PaaS pricing, which adds a margin over raw compute	25	10	7

Correct the rates for your region

Each rate can be overridden on the control plane with APP_COST_ESTIMATE_<KEY>_CPU_USD, APP_COST_ESTIMATE_<KEY>_MEMORY_USD and APP_COST_ESTIMATE_<KEY>_MINIMUM_USD, where <KEY> is the uppercased key from the table (VM, MANAGED_VM, PAAS).

APP_COST_ESTIMATE_VM_CPU_USD=3.5
APP_COST_ESTIMATE_VM_MEMORY_USD=3.0
APP_COST_ESTIMATE_VM_MINIMUM_USD=5
APP_COST_ESTIMATE_PAAS_CPU_USD=20

A malformed or negative value is ignored and the built-in default is kept. Restart the control plane after changing any of them.

Last modified on October 12, 2026

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Migrating from other platforms

Beta and experimental

What it is based on

The formula

Reference providers

Correct the rates for your region

​What it is based on

​The formula

​Reference providers

​Correct the rates for your region

What it is based on

The formula

Reference providers

Correct the rates for your region