> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vantage.sh/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Per Resource Costs > Welcome to the Per Resource Costs learning track on Vantage University! ## What Are Per Resource Costs? Per resource costs refer to the expenses associated with individual cloud resources, including both direct costs and those incurred through network traffic. By analyzing data from Active Resources, Resource Reports, and Network Flow Reports, you can gain a detailed understanding of how each resource contributes to your overall cloud spending. **Active Resources** provide an overview of all active resources (e.g., an active virtual machine) and their associated costs. **Resource Reports** break down costs by specific resources, providing insights into cost distribution. **Network Flow Reports** analyze the costs of network traffic associated with your resources. ## Why Should I Use Them? Combining data from Active Resources, Resource Reports, and Network Flow Reports offers a complete picture of how each resource impacts your total expenses. This visibility helps in identifying major cost drivers and optimizing resource usage. By pinpointing high-cost resources and inefficient network traffic, you can make informed decisions to optimize resource allocation and reduce unnecessary spending. Use rightsizing recommendations for EC2 instances and Kubernetes workloads to rightsize specific expensive resources. ## Per Resource Cost Use Cases As a **cloud architect**, you can use these tools to ensure that your cloud infrastructure is designed efficiently. By analyzing Active Resources and Resource Reports, you identify underutilized or unused resources that could be downsized or terminated to save costs. As a **DevOps engineer** managing a complex application with multiple microservices, Network Flow Reports help you detect that high cross-AZ traffic between microservices is leading to increased costs. You can then focus on optimizing network configurations, such as reducing cross-AZ traffic or implementing VPC endpoints, to lower costs while maintaining application performance. ## Lesson 1: Create Resource Reports