Cloud costs scale with usage, which means an unnoticed change — a VM left running, a test resource never cleaned up — can quietly turn into a surprising bill. Cost Management closes that visibility gap.

Steps

1. In the Azure portal, search for Cost Management.
2. Open Cost analysis to see current spending broken down by resource, service, or resource group — this is the fastest way to spot what's actually driving your bill.
3. Go to Budgets and click Add.
4. Set a monthly (or other period) spending amount, and configure alert thresholds — e.g. notify at 50%, 80%, and 100% of budget.
5. Add the email addresses that should be notified when a threshold is crossed.
6. Save the budget. Azure will now track spending against it automatically and send alerts as thresholds are hit.

Common Questions

Does a budget alert stop resources from running once we hit it?

No — budgets are for visibility and alerting only; they don't automatically shut anything down. Stopping resources in response to a budget alert is a manual step (or something you'd need to automate separately with an action).

What usually causes the biggest unexpected costs?

Most commonly: VMs left running (not deallocated) when they're not needed, oversized VMs for the actual workload, and forgotten test/dev resources that were never cleaned up — all worth checking first in Cost analysis.