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With tagging visibility in Vantage, you can view your provider tags and create and manage virtual tags.
Tags managed in your cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, or GCP. Vantage retrieves them so you can filter and group costs using your existing provider tagging strategy.

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Tag Management - Provider and Virtual Tags

On the Tags page, you can view all tags, including both provider and virtual tags. From the top navigation, click Settings. On the left navigation, under General Settings, click Tags. Four tabs are displayed: All Tags, Virtual Tags, Preferred Tags, and Hidden Tags.
On the All Tags tab, you can view both your provider tags (denoted by a grey tag icon) and virtual tags (denoted by a purple tag icon). Tags are listed along with any associated providers. You can also mark tags as preferred, hide or unhide a tag, and view a corresponding Cost Report filtered to that tag.If you select a virtual tag in this view, the virtual tag page is displayed, where you can edit any existing tag criteria.

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Tag Badges

Virtual tags may display badges next to the tag name to indicate special properties:
The allocated badge (calculator icon) appears when a virtual tag contains cost allocations, such as Business Metrics-Based, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based allocation tags. This indicates that the tag is used to allocate costs across teams, projects, or other organizational entities.
Tag badges showing Allocated and Collapsed indicators
At the top of the main Tags screen, you can search for specific tags and filter for tags by provider (e.g., AWS).

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Tag Management Options

Within the tag settings, you can hide tags, mark tags as preferred, or view a tag on a Cost Report.

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Hide Tags

From the Tags page, you can hide tag keys that you don’t want to appear in report filters or grouping options. This is useful for removing redundant tags or preventing other users from seeing certain tags in reports. To hide a tag key, click the eyeball icon next to the tag on the All Tags tab. As soon as a tag key is hidden, the following changes occur in Vantage:
  • Hidden from report menus: The tag key is no longer displayed in the Filters or Group By menus on reports for other Vantage users; however, users with the Organization Owner role can still manage tag visibility (i.e., unhide the tag) via the Tags screen.
  • Existing reports remain functional: If a report was already filtered or grouped by the hidden tag, it will continue to work, but if you edit the report’s filters, the hidden tag will no longer be available in the filter’s selection list.
  • Usable in virtual tags: Hidden tags can still be used when creating virtual tags and will appear in virtual tag filters. If a hidden tag is included in a virtual tag’s filter criteria, a message is displayed next to it, indicating that it is hidden and only usable for virtual tag creation.
  • Still accessible via API: Hidden tags remain available through API requests.
You are working to clean up your tagging and notice that teams have applied multiple variations of the same environment-related tag key across different AWS resources:
  • env
  • environment
  • Environment
Because all three tags represent the same concept, having them appear separately in report filters and grouping options creates inconsistencies and makes cost analysis more difficult. You are unable to see the full view of how costs are attributed to each environment.You complete the following steps to hide the redundant tags:
  • You navigate to the Tags page in Vantage to search for and identify the different versions of the environment tag. You then hide each iteration of this tag so that you can create a new standardized version of the tag with Vantage virtual tags.
New virtual tag that shows all iterations of environment
  • All three hidden tags no longer appear in the Filters and Group By menus for other users.
Attempting to filter for a hidden tag
  • Existing reports that were already filtered or grouped by these tags remain functional; however, if a user edits the report’s filters, they will no longer see those hidden tag variations.
  • The hidden tags are still available via API requests, so any external automation using them still continues to work.
You then complete the following steps to create a virtual tag that combines the values from all the previous tag iterations:Option 1: Using Tag Key Collapsing (Recommended)The simplest approach is to use Tag Key Collapsing:
  • Create a new virtual tag named environment
  • In the Collapsed Keys tab, add env, environment, and Environment as collapsed keys
  • Vantage will automatically merge all values from these tag keys into your environment virtual tag
This approach automatically handles all tag values without requiring you to create individual filters for each value.Option 2: Using Virtual Tag Values with FiltersAlternatively, you can create a virtual tag with custom value filters:
  • Create a new virtual tag named environment that consolidates all three variations from the AWS provider tag
  • For each tag value (e.g., production, development, etc.), create a separate filter that combines that specific value from all of the previous tag keys, and repeat this for each tag value you care about. You can then use this new virtual tag within reports
New virtual tag that shows all iterations of environment
As a result, your users now see only the environment virtual tag in their report filters, reducing confusion and keeping reports standardized. This approach helps enforce tagging consistency without you having to further educate your users on which versions of a tag key to use in reports.

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Preferred Tags

From the Tags page, you can mark tag keys as “preferred” so they are sorted to the top of every tag filter, group-by menu, and tag selector across Vantage. This is useful when your organization has dozens or hundreds of tag keys, but teams regularly use the same handful—such as environment, team, or cost-center—for the majority of their workflows.
Marking tags as preferred requires Organization Owner or Integration Owner permissions in Vantage. See the Role-Based Access Control documentation for details.
To mark a tag as preferred, click the bookmark icon next to the tag on the All Tags tab. The change takes effect immediately. Once a tag key is marked as preferred, the following changes occur in Vantage:
  • Sorted to the top of tag selectors: Preferred tags appear first in Filters and Group By menus on Cost Reports, Resource Reports, and other tag selectors across the platform, with a bookmark badge for visual identification.
  • Account-wide: When a tag is marked as preferred, all users in the account see it sorted to the top.
  • Independent from hidden tags: Preferred and hidden are independent settings. Hidden tags are excluded from filter menus regardless of preferred status.
There is no hard limit on the number of preferred tags; however, the feature is most useful when the list is focused. Consider marking 5–15 of your most frequently used tags as preferred.

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View Tags on a Cost Report

From the Tags page, you can view a Cost Report that is filtered and grouped based on a selected tag. You can do this for both provider and virtual tags. This can help you to view any current or past costs associated with the tag. In the below visual example:
  • The user searches for the environment virtual tag and selects to view a Cost Report for that tag.
  • The Cost Report is displayed. The report is filtered by the tag’s associated providers and grouped by that tag’s values.

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Virtual Tags

To get started with virtual tagging, you can also view a video demo on Vantage University .

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Virtual Tags vs. Saved Filters vs. Cost Allocation Segments

Virtual tags can be considered foundational to the rest of the data within Vantage. They should remain fairly static, and changes should be considered delicate. These changes will flow across all data and apply to all workspaces. The most common tag keys will be items like team, cost center, and environment. Segments can then be used to create different hierarchical views for tagged data. This feature is useful for breaking down the data by different perspectives, such as by cost center or by OPEX/CapEx. Saved filters can then be used in a more ad-hoc fashion to add lenses on top of base data. For instance, you could create a saved filter just for North America that standardizes a set of regions across providers and can be used by teams on their reports or dashboards without having to know the set of filters needed to create the list of regions. When new regions come online, it’s easy to modify the saved filter to include this region.
If you want to transition any of your cost allocation segments to virtual tags, contact support@vantage.sh.

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Custom Value Tags

With Custom Value Tags, you can create new cross-provider Virtual Tags to strengthen your tagging strategy. For example, you may have a series of resource tags, by product, across each of your providers. You can create custom tags in Vantage to combine those costs into one unique product tag for all resources in that product group. See the example section below for details.

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Cost Allocation Tags

Vantage supports three types of cost allocation for Virtual Tags, allowing you to distribute costs across teams, applications, or internal financial models:
  • Use Business-Metric Allocation when you want costs proportionally tied to an external driver (e.g., seats, requests, revenue).
  • Use Cost-Based Allocation when allocating proportionally based on another set of costs.
  • Use Percent-Based Allocation when you want full manual control or have negotiated/internal ratios that don’t rely on metrics or proportional drivers.
Cost-Based and Business Metrics-Based allocation types allow for dynamic cost allocation, which is the process of allocating costs based on another existing cost or metric. Percent-Based allocation provides manual control for negotiated or predefined internal allocations that don’t rely on external metrics or proportional usage. See the below video for an introduction to dynamic cost allocation.

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Cost-Based Allocation Tags

With cost-based allocation tags, you can create a dynamically allocated cost structure. Select a set of input costs (e.g., all AWS costs), an existing cost tag to use for allocation (e.g., a team tag), and an output cost (e.g., a static cost, like AWS Support) that you want to be allocated the same way as your input cost. See the example section below for details.

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Business Metrics-Based Allocation Tags

With business metrics-based allocation tags, you select an existing business metric (e.g., CPU use per product) and indicate your output cost (e.g., all GCP Compute costs) so that the allocation of the output cost mimics the percentage allocation of the existing business metric. See the example section below for details.

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Percent-Based Allocation Tags

With percent-based allocation tags, you can allocate costs using fixed percentages directly within a Virtual Tag. This gives you full control over how costs are distributed across teams, applications, or internal financial models, without needing external metrics or proportional usage data. Percent-based allocation is ideal for:
  • Predefined internal chargeback models with negotiated splits
  • Manual cost-splitting requirements
  • Costs with fixed allocation agreements (e.g., AWS Shield, Marketplace purchases)
Vantage will multiply the matched costs by the percentage and attribute the resulting amount to the tag value.
The total allocation across all tag values must equal exactly 100%. You cannot allocate more or less than 100% of the filtered costs.
If you change the percentage allocation later, Vantage will reprocess costs for that Virtual Tag. It will then update your costs accordingly. Historical and current months will reflect the new allocation percentage once processing completes, up to the date of your Billing Period Backfill. There is no limit to the number of Percent-Based allocations for a specific tag value, but each configuration applies to your value limit for a Virtual Tag. See the example section below for details.

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Virtual Tag Allocation Rules

When configuring virtual tag values with allocation types, keep in mind the following rules and restrictions:
When creating Business Metrics-Based, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based allocation tags, you can use provider tags, virtual tags that use Custom Values, and related allocated virtual tags in the Output Costs Filter.If you reference another allocated virtual tag, it must belong to the same provider-specific allocation chain. For example, a Sub-Team allocated tag can reference Team = Engineering in AWS, but it cannot reference allocated tags from separate AWS allocation chains in the same configuration.If you attempt to combine allocated virtual tags that belong to separate hierarchies, Vantage will prevent the configuration from being saved.
You can use existing virtual tags in the Output Costs Filter for Custom Value virtual tags. See the Nested Virtual Tags section for details.
You can mix different allocation types within the same Virtual Tag Key. Tag configuration rules will be evaluated sequentially, similar to standard Virtual Tag logic.For example, you could create a Team virtual tag that includes the following separate sets of values:
  • Custom Value allocations for costs directly tagged with team names in your cloud provider
  • Cost-Based allocations for shared infrastructure costs (e.g., allocating AWS Support fees proportionally based on team usage)
  • Percent-Based allocations for fixed cost splits (e.g., allocating Marketplace purchases with pre-negotiated percentages: 60% to Infrastructure, 30% to Mobile, 10% to Data)
Vantage will evaluate these rules in order and apply the first matching allocation type to each cost.
When you filter or group by a tag that uses cost allocation (Business Metrics-Based, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based) on a Cost Report, you can use multiple allocated tags from the same provider only when they belong to the same allocation chain. An allocation chain exists when one allocated tag references another allocated tag in its Output Costs Filter.This restriction exists because allocated tags redistribute costs into a separate dataset. Vantage can reconcile one allocated hierarchy per provider at a time. Using two independent allocated tags from the same provider in the same query would produce inaccurate totals.Keep in mind the following details about this restriction:
  • Regular tags are not affected. Provider tags and virtual tags that use only Custom Values are never restricted. You can combine as many non-allocating tags as you want in filters and groupings.
  • The restriction is per provider. You can use one allocation chain for AWS and a different allocation chain for Azure on the same report, since each provider’s data is queried independently.
  • Applies to both filters and groupings. The restriction is enforced across both the filter criteria and group-by selections on a Cost Report. For example, if you filter by one allocated AWS chain, you cannot also group by a different allocated AWS chain.
If you need to view costs for two independent allocated tags from the same provider, create separate Cost Reports for each.
See the Allocation-on-Allocation Example below for a concrete example.

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Small Allocation Grouping

When using cost allocation tags (Business Metrics-Based, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based), Vantage automatically groups allocations that are individually less than 0.01% of the total allocation together under a single label: other allocations (≤ 0.01%/each). This grouping helps simplify Cost Reports by consolidating many small allocations into a single category, making it easier to focus on the larger allocations while still accounting for all costs. The grouped allocations appear with this label in:
  • Filters: When filtering by tag values, small allocations appear as “other allocations (≤ 0.01%/each)” instead of individual tag values
  • Groupings: When grouping by tags in Cost Reports, small allocations are aggregated under this label
  • Reports: The label appears wherever tag values are displayed, replacing what would normally show as individual tag values like “Cost Center A” or “Team B”
For example, if you have a cost allocation tag with 20 different team allocations, and 15 of those teams each receive less than 0.01% of the total allocation, those 15 teams will be grouped together and displayed as “other allocations (≤ 0.01%/each)” in your filters, groupings, and reports. The remaining 5 teams with allocations above 0.01% will continue to appear as individual tag values.

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Virtual Tag Time Frames

By default, a Virtual Tag rule applies to all matching costs regardless of when they were incurred. With time frames, you can optionally set a start date and end date on any Virtual Tag value to control the time period during which that rule applies. This is useful when cost ownership or allocation changes over time, such as during organizational restructuring, resource handoffs between teams, or evolving chargeback models. Time frames are available for all Virtual Tag value types: Custom Value, Business Metric, Cost-Based, and Percent-Based.
If no time frame is set on a value, the rule applies to all historical costs up to your Billing Period Backfill and future costs that match the filter criteria, which is the default behavior.
How time frames work:
  • Granularity: Time frames are applied at daily granularity. Start dates are inclusive, and end dates are inclusive of the full day. For example, setting an end date of June 30 means the rule applies through the end of June 30.
  • Open-ended ranges: You can leave the start date, end date, or both empty. An empty start date means the rule applies from the beginning of your data. An empty end date means the rule applies indefinitely into the future.
  • Multiple time frames: You can define the same tag value name multiple times, each with different time frames and potentially different filter criteria. For example, you can define “Team A” for January–June with one set of filters and “Team A” for July onward with a different set.
  • Priority and overlapping time frames: Virtual Tag rules are evaluated in priority order within the Virtual Tag. If a cost matches multiple rules with overlapping time periods, the value from the first matching rule is applied, consistent with the standard Virtual Tag order behavior.
  • Nested Virtual Tags: Time frames work with nested Virtual Tags. Nested Virtual Tags respect the time frames of the Virtual Tags they reference. Note that tag resolution occurs sequentially, so upstream time frame changes may affect downstream results.

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Virtual Tags Limit

You can create up to 50 virtual tag configurations, with each tag supporting up to 100 configuration values. A warning is displayed when you approach the virtual tag limit to help you manage your virtual tag usage before reaching the limit. There is no limit to the number of time frame configurations for a specific tag value, but each time frame configuration applies to the value limit for a Virtual Tag.
If you need to increase this limit, current customers should contact support. Prospective customers should contact sales.

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Create Virtual Tags

This feature requires Organization Owner permissions in Vantage. See the Role-Based Access Control documentation for details. Virtual tags apply to all workspaces.
Automating Virtual Tags: If you manage Virtual Tags using the Vantage API or Terraform provider, the user associated with a personal API token must have Owner permissions. For service tokens, the token must be assigned to the Everyone team. Service tokens on other teams will not have the required permissions. See the Terraform provider documentation for additional details on service token configuration.
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From the top navigation, click Settings.
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From the side navigation, under General Settings, click Tags.
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On the All Tags tab, all your tags—both provider and virtual—are displayed. Click the Virtual Tags tab. All existing virtual tags are displayed. You can edit any existing tags from this tab. To add a new virtual tag, click Create a Virtual Tag.
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Enter a title for the Tag Key.
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For Billing Period Backfill, select a billing period (e.g., Apr 2024) for which the tag should be backfilled.
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Enable the Can Override toggle if you want the virtual tag to override an existing service cost value. For example, if you create a virtual tag that conflicts with an existing provider tag, this option will override the existing provider tag key in Vantage reports.
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In the Values section, click +Add. Select whether you want to create a Custom Value, Business Metric, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based value. Click through the tabs below for instructions on each value type.
For important considerations about filter restrictions, using virtual tags in filters, and mixing allocation types, see the Virtual Tag Allocation Rules section above.
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Click Assign Custom Value.
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Enter a Tag Value title. Titles can contain only letters, numbers, and the following characters: _ - & + , . : / \ @. You cannot use saved filters to define a virtual tag value’s filters.
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Specify the tag value’s filter criteria (i.e., Output Cost Filters). These filters function just like filters on Cost Reports and cost allocation segments. For information on how to create detailed filters, see the Cost Reports documentation. You can also click View as VQL to edit filter criteria as VQL directly.
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Optional: Set a time frame for a tag value

Click the Set a Time Frame toggle. When enabled, you can enter a Start Date and End Date to define when this tag rule should apply. Both fields are optional:
  • Leave the Start Date empty for the rule to apply from the beginning of your data.
  • Leave the End Date empty for the rule to apply indefinitely into the future.
  • Set both dates to restrict the rule to a specific time period.
If the toggle is disabled, the rule applies to all time. For more information on how time frames work, see Virtual Tag Time Frames.
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At the top, click Save.
Processing tag changes usually takes under an hour. At the top of the Virtual Tags screen, the processing status is displayed. Processing times vary based on the number of tags and volume of data you have imported into Vantage.
The virtual tag screen with a processing status displayed for Fastly and New Relic

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Nested Virtual Tags

With nested virtual tags, you can use virtual tags as part of the filter criteria for other virtual tag values. The most common use case is nesting Custom Value Virtual Tags so you can align cloud provider data with internal taxonomies for effective grouping and querying. Allocation-on-allocation uses the same chaining concept for allocated tags, but only when the referenced allocated tags belong to the same provider-specific allocation chain. To reference an existing virtual tag in another virtual tag:
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Create a new Custom Value, Business Metric, Cost-Based, or Percent-Based value.
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Enter a name.
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For the Output Costs Filter:
  • Select a provider.
  • Select Tag, then select an existing virtual tag key. Look for the purple tag icon with the Vantage logo to identify existing virtual tags.
The virtual tag screen selecting an existing virtual tag in the filter for a new tag value

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Nested Virtual Tag Considerations

  • Do not create a nested virtual tag that references itself (i.e., a cyclical reference); this will result in an error.
  • If you update the filters of a virtual tag that is referenced by another virtual tag, costs are reprocessed based on the updated hierarchy.
  • If you delete or rename a virtual tag that is referenced by another virtual tag, you will see a warning. If you proceed, Vantage reprocesses costs with the new configuration.
  • If a nested relationship includes cost allocation, every referenced allocated tag in that relationship must stay within the same provider-specific allocation chain.
Modal that's displayed indicating if you delete a nested virtual tag that it will affect other connected tags
  • Changing the Billing Period Backfill on a virtual tag does not automatically update the backfill period on any tags it references. For example, if Tag A references Tag B and you extend Tag A’s backfill to an earlier period, Tag B keeps its original backfill period. To align data across nested tags, update the backfill period on each tag individually. If any of the tags use cost allocation, update the referenced tags first and wait for processing to complete before updating the parent tag.
  • You can create up to 49 nested virtual tags, since an organization is limited to 50 distinct virtual tag keys. Because nested virtual tags are processed sequentially, increasing the number of nested values will slow down the tagging process.
See the Nested Virtual Tags Example section below for a sample tag hierarchy.

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Virtual Tag Order

Tag values are arranged in priority order on the Virtual Tags screen. You can move tag values up and down in the UI to reorder them, as demonstrated in the visual example below.
GIF of two tag values, staging and production, being reordered in the Tags UI
When cost data is ingested into Vantage, the first value that matches the corresponding filters will be applied to that line item. In cases where filters overlap, the order of tag values within each key determines the value that is applied.

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Filter and Group by Virtual Tags

You can filter by virtual tags in Cost Reports, cost allocation segments, and when creating saved filters. Virtual tags are visible along with your existing provider tags. Use the Tag (Label in GCP) filter and grouping option.
A Cost Report filter with two filters applied: one for AWS costs for the team/data tag and one for GCP costs with the same tag

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Delete a Virtual Tag

To delete a virtual tag, navigate to the Tags page. Select the Virtual Tags tab and open an existing virtual tag. Click the trashcan icon at the top of the tag page. Your data will be re-tagged, excluding the deleted virtual tag, going back to the deleted tag’s backfill bill period. Newly ingested data will no longer be tagged with the deleted tag. For Percent-Based Allocation tags, when you delete the tag, the allocation will be removed, and the costs will be reprocessed to reflect their unallocated state for that Virtual Tag key. Once reprocessed, your allocation will be removed from your cost data in Cost Reports.

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Tag Key Collapsing

Tag key collapsing allows you to consolidate semantically redundant tag keys into a single standardized virtual tag. When you create a virtual tag, you can collapse both provider tags (tags from your cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or GCP) and virtual tags (existing virtual tags you’ve created in Vantage) into that virtual tag.
See the Tag Key Collapsing Examples section for step-by-step examples of standardizing inconsistent tags, cross-provider normalization, and collapsing virtual tags.

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How It Works

Vantage automatically merges values from collapsed tag keys into your virtual tag. For example, if some teams use env while others use Environment, both can be collapsed into a single virtual tag key like environment. Tag Key Collapsing works across all connected providers in Vantage, and there is no hard limit on the number of tag keys you can collapse into a single standardized key. Evaluation order Collapsed keys are evaluated before virtual tag value configurations (i.e., any configurations added to the Values tab). If a resource matches a collapsed key, that value is used instead of value configurations. When you remove a collapsed tag key mapping, the collapsed values will be removed up until your specified backfill period for the virtual tag. Each collapsed key can be expanded to configure two optional settings:
  • Filter: Restrict which costs are eligible for that collapsed key (for example, a specific provider or account). If a filter is set, only costs that match both the source tag key and the filter can contribute a value. When filters on different collapsed keys overlap, the value from the first matching key (highest in the list) is used.
  • Value prefix: Prepend a fixed string to every value taken from that collapsed key. This is useful when you need to distinguish which source key a value came from after collapsing. For example, with a prefix of aws:, a value of production becomes aws:production in the virtual tag.
Priority When a resource has multiple collapsed tags, the value from the highest-priority key is used. Priority is determined by the order in your collapsed keys list—keys higher in the list have higher priority. For example, if a resource has both env:prod and environment:production, and environment is ranked higher, the resource will be tagged with production.
Priority works similarly to Virtual Tag Order for tag values—the first matching key in your list takes precedence.
Original tag keys remain in your data; you can choose to hide them from reports using the Hide Tags feature.

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Collapse Tag Keys

To collapse tag keys, you first need to create a virtual tag or edit an existing one.
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Navigate to Settings > Tags and select the Virtual Tags tab. Click Create a Virtual Tag or edit an existing virtual tag.
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For a new virtual tag, enter a Tag Key name. This will be the standardized key that all collapsed tag keys will map to. Configure Billing Period Backfill and Can Override settings as needed.
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In the tag configuration section, you will see two tabs: Values and Collapsed Keys. Select the Collapsed Keys tab.
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In the search field, search for and select the tag keys you want to collapse into this virtual tag. You can select multiple tag keys, including both provider tags and existing virtual tags. Once added, each collapsed key will appear in a list below.
Searching for and selecting tag keys to collapse
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Reorder collapsed keys as needed by clicking the Reorder button in the top right and dragging the keys to your desired priority order.Keys higher in the list take precedence over keys lower in the list.
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Optional: Configure filters and value prefixes per collapsed key

Expand a collapsed key row to configure optional settings:
  1. Add a Filter (optional): Use the same filter builder as Cost Reports to limit which costs are eligible for collapsing from that source tag key. For example, you can scope to one or more Provider values, accounts, services, or other dimensions. If you do not add a filter, Vantage merges values from that tag key everywhere it appears in your account (across providers that have that key in your data).
  2. Add a Value Prefix (optional): Turn on the prefix toggle and enter a string to prepend to every collapsed value from that key. The prefix is applied exactly as entered, and no separator is added automatically. For example, with the prefix team:, the value engineering becomes team:engineering. When a prefix is active, a badge displaying the prefix appears on the collapsed key row so you can see it at a glance without expanding the row. Turning the toggle off clears the prefix. Prefixes can contain letters, numbers, spaces, and the following characters: _ - @ & + , . : /.
Provider icons on each collapsed key row reflect the filter when one is set; otherwise, they reflect which providers expose that tag key in your account.If a collapsed key corresponds to a hidden tag, a visibility icon is displayed on the row indicating it is hidden from reports.This is useful when you want to standardize tag keys across specific providers while keeping other costs separate. For example, you might collapse team from AWS and Team from Azure into a single virtual tag by adding a Provider filter on each collapsed key, while leaving other providers’ team tags out of scope.
When no per-key filter is set, any new provider integration that starts reporting the same tag key can be included automatically once that key appears in your data. When you scope a collapsed key with a filter (for example Provider = AWS only), only costs within that filter are eligible—other providers or accounts are not included unless you add them to the filter.
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Optional: Add value configurations

If you want to add additional value configurations, click the Values tab.Remember that collapsed keys are evaluated first, so any resources already matched by collapsed keys will use those values instead of the value configurations.
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Click Save at the top of the page.

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Virtual Tagging Examples

The following examples demonstrate how to use virtual tagging in a multi-provider organization.

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Custom Values Examples

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Example 1 - Cross-Provider Tagging

You want to create a tag mapping for each of your teams that maps corresponding teams with certain services and provider accounts.
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Create a New Tag

You create a tag key called Teams.
The Tag Key field displayed in the Virtual Tags UI; the name Teams is entered
2

Add Tag Values and Filters

You add the corresponding set of virtual tag values and filters:
  • The data team tag value corresponds with a filter for all costs for GCP BigQuery and Amazon Redshift.
  • The mobile team tag value corresponds with a filter for its related GCP projects and AWS accounts.
  • You continue this pattern and create similar values with corresponding filters for your other teams.
A sample Tag Value field for a value of data with filter for Service of BigQuery and Amazon Redshift
A sample Tag Value field for a value of data with a filter for GCP Project of mobile and AWS account of mobile
Within Cost Reports, you can easily filter and group by these tag options to easily see costs for an individual team. In the below visual example, the Cost Report is grouped by the team tag, and the mobile and data values are displayed along with the other team tag values you created.
A sample Cost Report grouped by Tag showing a mobile and data tag

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Example 2 - Consolidate Existing Tags

You have a tagging practice established at your organization, but teams often create tags with spelling variations, tags with typos, or they create duplicate tags. For example, the data team has resources tagged with data, Data, and data-prod. This is an issue across many of your teams. You want to consolidate all these tags, across providers, into one data tag.
1

Create a New Tag

You create a tag key called Teams to override existing tags.
The Tag Key field displayed in the Virtual Tags UI; the name Teams is entered
2

Add Tag Values and Filters

You add the corresponding set of virtual tag values and filters. In this example, all permutations of the data team tag are combined into one virtual tag.
A sample Tag Value field for a value of AWS team tags equaling data, data-prod, and Data. Another value for a GCP team Label equaling data
Within Cost Reports, you can easily filter by this tag to see all costs related to the data team. This saves you the work of needing to always filter for all permutations of this tag. Now, you need to filter by only one tag.
A Cost Report with a filter for AWS and GCP team tag of data

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Example 3 - Using Flexible Match to Consolidate Similar Tag Values

Your teams use inconsistent tagging conventions, resulting in multiple variations in casing and formatting. For example, Team A’s tag appears in several forms across usage data, such as teamA, team_a, team-a, and Team A. You can use the flexible match filter option to match for all of these variants, as well as future variants, in a single tag configuration.
1

Create a New Tag

You create a tag key called Teams to override existing tags.
The Tag Key field displayed in the Virtual Tags UI; the name Teams is entered
2

Add Tag Values and Filters

Create a virtual tag configuration for Team A. For the Output Costs Filter, use the Teams flexible match to the string Team A.
A sample Tag Value field for a value of AWS Team tag flexible matches Team A
This will automatically match all variants of Team A, such as teamA, team_a, team-a, and Team A.

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Cost-Based Allocation Example

In your organization, teams share resources, such as RDS databases or EC2 instances, and each team consumes different percentages of these resources each month. Your organization is also charged a static support fee each month for AWS. As shown in the diagram below, you want to allocate a portion of the support fee to each team based on their proportional use of AWS resources. So in the below example, since the Infra team is responsible for 50% of all AWS costs, they should also be responsible for 50% of the support fee. You can create a cost-based allocation virtual tag for allocating portions of the support fee to each respective team.
1

Prerequisites

You have an existing provider tag in AWS that identifies resources for your teams. This tag will be used in the next step.
2

Create a New Cost-Based Allocation Tag

  • Navigate to Settings > Tags.
  • Create a new virtual tag.
  • Select the Cost-Based option for the tag value.
3

Select an Input Costs Filter

For your input cost, select All AWS Costs. Set an additional filter for the Usage charge type to filter on only usage-related costs. This filter will ignore costs related to items like credits, taxes, fees, etc.
4

Select a Tag Key

You select your existing teams tag key you have in AWS that will be used for allocating costs.
5

Select an Output Costs Filter

In this example, since your infrastructure team is responsible for 50% of all AWS costs, the mobile team for 20%, and the data team for 30%, you can mimic this allocation across another static cost, or your output cost. Select the filters for the AWS support fee.
A sample Tag Value field for AWS Support Fee costs
Once the tag is created, create a new Cost Report and add the following criteria:
  • Create a filter for AWS Support costs.
  • Add grouping criteria to group by your new cost-based dynamic allocation tag.
The resulting report shows how much of the support fee each team is allocated.
A sample Tag Value field for AWS Support Fee costs

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Business Metrics-Based Allocation Example

You are working with your infrastructure team and want to ensure that the proportional cost of CPU time on a shared resource is allocated to the distinct cost centers that are consuming the CPU. In the below example, you want each team’s portion of CPU usage billed as a corresponding percentage of the overall Namespace CPU cost. So, if Team A uses 30% of the resource’s CPU, then they should be billed a proportional percentage of the total Namespace’s costs.
1

Prerequisites

To determine the cost of CPU time to allocate to each respective team, you first create a labeled business metric that includes the CPU time labeled by team. Vantage then calculates the respective percentage of CPU time for each team. The labeled business metric has the following format.
date,amount,label
2024-01-09,825,teama
2024-01-09,600,teamb
2024-01-10,500,teama
2024-01-10,200,teamb
2024-01-11,723,teama
2024-01-11,456,teamb
2

Create a New Business Metrics-Based Allocation Tag

You create a new business metrics-based tag:
  • Navigate to Settings > Tags.
  • Create a new virtual tag.
  • Select the Business Metric option for the tag value.
3

Select the Labeled Business Metric

Search for and select the labeled business metric you just created to use for allocation.
4

Select an Output Costs Filter

Select the Vantage costs that will be split based on the percentages calculated in your business metric. In this case, you select a filter to show costs for the specific Namespace you want to be allocated.
A sample Tag Value field for specific Kubernetes namespace costs
Once the tag is created, create a new Cost Report and add the following criteria:
  • Create a filter for the specific Namespace.
  • Add grouping criteria to group by your new business metrics-based dynamic allocation tag.
The resulting report shows how much of the Namespace costs each team is allocated.
A Cost Report showing namespace costs allocated by team

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Percent-Based Allocation Example

Your organization has negotiated fixed cost splits for Marketplace purchases. For example, at the time of purchase, you pre-agreed that Marketplace costs should be split 60% to the Infrastructure team, 30% to the Mobile team, and 10% to the Data team. You want these allocations to be automatically applied in your chargeback models.
1

Prerequisites

You have an existing provider tag in AWS that identifies resources for your teams. This tag will be used to attribute the allocated costs.
2

Create a New Percent-Based Allocation Tag

  • Navigate to Settings > Tags.
  • Create a new virtual tag (e.g., Marketplace Allocation).
  • In the Values section, click +Add and select Percent-Based.
3

Add First Tag Value - Infrastructure Team

  • Specify the Output Costs Filter to match your Marketplace purchase costs (i.e., costs where Marketplace purchases Only).
  • Enter the tag value name: infra. Titles can contain only letters, numbers, and the following characters: _ - @ & + , . : / \.
  • Enter the percentage: 60 (between 0 and 100).
4

Add Second Tag Value - Mobile Team

  • Click +Add a Tag Value to add another value.
  • Enter the tag value name: mobile.
  • Enter the percentage: 30.
5

Add Third Tag Value - Data Team

  • Click +Add a Tag Value to add another value.
  • Enter the tag value name: data.
  • Enter the percentage: 10.
6

Review Allocations in Cost Reports

Once the tag is created, create a new Cost Report and add the following criteria:
  • Create a filter for Marketplace costs.
  • Add grouping criteria to group by your new percent-based allocation tag.
The resulting report shows how much of the costs each team is allocated based on your fixed percentages.

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Allocation-on-Allocation Example

Many FinOps teams need a layered chargeback model. For example, you may first allocate shared AWS costs to high-level teams, then take one team’s share and allocate it again to sub-teams for a second level of accountability. Allocation-on-allocation supports this pattern when the allocated tags are part of the same provider-specific allocation chain. In this example, your organization has three Percent-Based allocated tags for AWS:
  • Team splits all AWS costs across Engineering, Sales, and Marketing.
  • Sub-Team takes the costs already allocated to Engineering via the Team tag and splits them further across Frontend, Backend, and Platform.
  • Region independently splits all AWS costs across US, EU, and APAC.
1

Create the Parent Allocated Tag

Create a Percent-Based allocated tag called Team that splits all AWS costs across your primary owners, such as Engineering, Sales, and Marketing.
2

Create the Child Allocated Tag

Create a second Percent-Based allocated tag called Sub-Team.
  • In the Output Costs Filter, select AWS costs where Team = Engineering.
  • Add the downstream values you need, such as Frontend, Backend, and Platform.
  • Set the percentages so the Engineering share is fully reallocated across those sub-teams.
3

Validate the Allocation Chain

Because Sub-Team references Team, both tags belong to the same AWS allocation chain. That means you can use them together on the same Cost Report.
4

Review the Results in a Cost Report

Create a Cost Report and:
  • Filter to AWS if needed.
  • Group by Team.
  • Add a second grouping for Sub-Team.
This lets you keep the top-level team view while drilling into the Engineering portion of the allocation.
5

Use Separate Reports for Independent Chains

If you also create another allocated tag for AWS that does not reference Team or Sub-Team, such as the separate Region allocation in this example, that tag belongs to a different allocation chain. Create a separate Cost Report when you need to analyze that independent AWS allocation.

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Nested Virtual Tags Example

You want to maintain a hierarchy that reflects how your business units are associated with various applications, and track costs of all your applications per business unit over time. In addition, you also want to avoid having to manually update multiple virtual tags whenever an application changes ownership to another business unit, so you aim to set up a dynamic structure that’s automatically updated.
1

Create an Application Virtual Tag with Values for Each App

You create a new tag called Applications:
  • Each value represents a specific application (e.g., app1, app2, app3, app4).
  • The filters for each value are AWS costs related to specific resources, like RDS or EC2 instances.
An example of an application tag based on specific AWS resources
2

Create a Virtual Tag for Business Unit Costs

Next, you define a virtual tag for Business Units:
  • Each value represents a specific business unit (e.g., Core Production, Core Development).
  • Each filter uses the preexisting Applications virtual tag you just created to associate specific apps with the corresponding business unit. Notice that virtual tags are denoted by a purple Vantage tag icon to differentiate them from provider tags (gray icon).
An example of a business unit tagged associated with an existing application tag
3

Review the Nested Virtual Tag in Reports

In associated reports, you can track all costs per business unit, knowing that each business unit comprises a set of corresponding apps. If an app ever changes its associated business unit, you need to update only the filter criteria on the Business Units virtual tag, and all other costs will be processed accordingly. The below report is grouped both by business unit and application to show the total breakdown.
An example Cost Report with the Applications and Business Unit tag groupings

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Time-Bound Virtual Tag Example

Your organization recently went through a re-org. A shared Kubernetes cluster was owned by the Infrastructure team through June, but in July, responsibility moved to the Platform team. You want your Virtual Tags to reflect this change so that chargeback reports correctly attribute costs to the right team during each period.
1

Create a Virtual Tag

Navigate to Settings > Tags and create a new virtual tag called Cluster Owner.
2

Add the First Time-Bound Value

Click +Add and select Assign Custom Value:
  • Enter the tag value name: infrastructure.
  • Set the Output Costs Filter to match the shared Kubernetes cluster (e.g., filter for the specific cluster’s resource IDs or namespace).
  • Click the Set a Time Frame toggle to enable it.
  • Leave the Start Date empty so the rule applies from the beginning of your data.
  • Set the End Date to June 30 to indicate the Infrastructure team’s ownership ends at the close of June.
3

Add the Second Time-Bound Value

Click +Add and select Assign Custom Value again:
  • Enter the tag value name: platform.
  • Set the same Output Costs Filter to match the shared Kubernetes cluster.
  • Click the Set a Time Frame toggle to enable it.
  • Set the Start Date to July 1.
  • Leave the End Date empty so the rule applies indefinitely into the future.
4

Save and Review

Click Save. Vantage will process costs and apply the infrastructure value to costs incurred through June 30 and the platform value to costs from July 1 onward. In your Cost Reports, you can now group by the Cluster Owner tag to see accurate cost attribution across the ownership transition.

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Tagging Untaggable Resources in AWS Example

While you can apply cost and metadata tags in AWS to many resources, there are many other resources that are untaggable in AWS. Therefore, it is hard, if not almost impossible, to achieve 100% allocation in AWS alone. One quick way to first get an inventory of all untagged resources in Vantage—regardless of if they are untaggable—is to create a Cost Report with the following filters:
  • Provider is AWS
  • Where Not Tagged with Any Key
Untagged cost filters
Then, add grouping criteria for Service and Category to get a view of the types of resources that are currently untagged. If these resources are taggable in AWS, you can add cost allocation tags there and see those tags represented in Vantage when you filter or group by specific tag.
See the AWS documentation for more information on what you can tag directly in AWS.
Untagged cost filters
Many services and resource categories, however, cannot be tagged in AWS. You can use virtual tags to create tags in Vantage for these untaggable resources. In the table below, the Vantage Resource Filters column represents the filters you can set as the Output Costs Filter in the virtual tag configuration. For example, if you want to tag S3 Data Transfer for specific resources, you could use the following filter criteria.
Untagged cost filters
AWS ResourceDescriptionVantage Resource Filters
Elastic IPsAccording to AWS, “You can tag an Elastic IP address that’s allocated for use in a VPC, however, cost allocation tags are not supported.”Provider: AWS Subcategory: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud contains inuse
CloudWatch MetricsCloudWatch Metrics involve performance data from AWS services, which are not taggable and are used for monitoring and alerting.Provider: AWS Category: AmazonCloudWatch is Metric Further filter by resource ID
S3 Data TransferData transferred in and out of S3 buckets, which is tracked but not taggable.Provider: AWS Category: Amazon Simple Storage Service is Data Transfer Further filter by resource ID
QuickSight resourcesResources within Amazon QuickSight, such as dashboards and analyses, which do not support tagging.Provider: AWS Service: Amazon Quicksight Optional detailed filters for Category (e.g., Business Analytics) or individual resource ID
CloudSearch resourcesAmazon CloudSearch domains and their configurations, which are untaggable.Provider: AWS Service: Amazon CloudSearch Optional detailed filters for Category (e.g., Data Transfer, Search Instance) or individual resource ID
EBS Snapshot CopyAmazon EBS Snapshots that are copied between regions for Disaster Recovery or restore purposesProvider: AWS Service: Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) Category: Storage Snapshot Further filter for resource ID

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Tag Key Collapsing Examples

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Example 1 - Standardizing Inconsistent Provider Tags

Teams often use variations of the same tag key due to different tagging conventions across your cloud providers. For example:
  • env, environment, Environment
  • team, Team, team_name
  • app, Application, application
With Tag Key Collapsing, you can map all these provider tag variations to a single standardized virtual tag key (e.g., “environment”) without needing to update tags in your cloud providers.
1

Create a Virtual Tag

Create a new virtual tag with the key name “environment” (or your preferred standardized name).
2

Add Collapsed Keys

In the Collapsed Keys tab, add all the variations you want to consolidate:
  • env
  • environment
  • Environment
3

Set Priority Order

Reorder the collapsed keys so that your preferred collapsed key (for example, if you prefer environment over env) appears first in the list. This ensures that if a resource has multiple of these tags, the value from the highest-priority collapsed key (the one highest in the list) is used.
4

Save and Review

Click Save. Vantage will automatically merge all values from the collapsed tag keys into your standardized “environment” virtual tag. You can now filter and group by this single tag in your reports.

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Example 2 - Cross-Provider Tag Normalization

If you have the same concept tagged differently across providers (e.g., “team” in AWS and “Team” in Azure), you can collapse both provider tags into a single virtual tag key for consistent reporting across all providers.
1

Create a Virtual Tag

Create a new virtual tag with the key name “team” (or your preferred standardized name).
2

Add Provider-Specific Collapsed Keys

In the Collapsed Keys tab, add team and Team as separate collapsed keys. Expand each row and, under Add a Filter, scope to the right cloud provider (for example Provider = AWS for team, and Provider = Azure for Team). Set priority if a resource could match both.
3

Save and Review

Click Save. Your reports will now show a consistent “team” tag across both AWS and Azure, regardless of the original tag casing in each provider.

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Example 3 - Collapsing Virtual Tags

You can collapse existing virtual tag keys into other virtual tags, allowing you to create hierarchies or consolidate multiple virtual tags into a single standardized tag. For example, you might collapse several application-related virtual tags into a single “Application” virtual tag for simplified reporting.
1

Create a Consolidated Virtual Tag

Create a new virtual tag with the key name “Application” (or your preferred consolidated name).
2

Add Existing Virtual Tags as Collapsed Keys

In the Collapsed Keys tab, add your existing application-related virtual tags:
  • “app”
  • “App”
  • “application”
3

Set Priority and Save

Reorder the collapsed keys to set your preferred priority order, then click Save. All values from the collapsed virtual tags will now appear under the single “Application” virtual tag in your reports.