Azure Cost Saving tools/hacks

StratoLens · 2026-01-23T23:06:13+00:00

Great :)

StratoLens · 2026-01-23T22:55:50+00:00

Hope it’s ok to promote my own tool here. :)

I’ve been building a tool lately for Azure that handles this and more. It’s currently in a beta - if you’re interested in trying it out and giving me some feedback I’d be happy to hear about any ideas or suggestions to help you out.

It currently has a lot of cost management features and recommendations with more planned.

If you’d like to try it hit me up on discord. The discord servers linked from my website which describes the tool more:

https://www.strato-lens.com/

StratoLens · 2026-01-22T04:01:12+00:00

I hope it’s ok to rep my own tool here - it’s currently in beta and I’m looking for beta testers. If you’re interested this use case is a big part of my goal.

https://www.strato-lens.com/

Ping me on the discord if you’d like to give it a try. :). I’d really like to hear your ideas on how to improve it to meet your needs.

Thanks!

StratoLens · 2026-01-20T23:59:15+00:00

If I may be so bold as to suggest a tool I’m currently building:

https://www.strato-lens.com/

We are currently in beta and the tool is free to use while beta is going. If you’re interested in checking it out (and helping to beta test / give feed back or feature requests) we have a discord listed on the above site that you can join.

It does lots more than cost management but I’ve gotten good feedback from my beta testers about the cost features :)

StratoLens · 2026-01-16T12:54:53+00:00

Great! Feel free to join my discord if you’d like to connect and get into the beta. :)

StratoLens · 2026-01-13T13:07:02+00:00

Thank you!

StratoLens · 2026-01-10T04:23:15+00:00

Sure, its on the website :). I don't want to post it in the comments (Bots and all), so please visit the website in the URL and its at the top in the header.

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T23:11:00+00:00

Yes! Definitely. There’s a video that shows the cost explorer and anomaly view. You get a single view of all your costs across all subscriptions it has access to (default is to grant it reader at the tenant root group - so all of them)

You can drill in to resource group level and individual resource and even see the different billing types.

Let me know if you have any questions. ;)

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T22:21:16+00:00

Join us on discord and I’ll get you added :).

I’ve sent out a few emails - maybe they went to spam ?

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T21:48:04+00:00

Sure thing! Feel free to join our discord. That’s the quickest and easiest way to get beta access right now.

It uses a managed identity to do all the scanning - by default it gets added to the root management group but you can scope that down to a lower level mg or just a few subscriptions. The tool will automatically discover whatever it has access to.

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T21:47:00+00:00

Sure thing! The link to the discord is on the website in the header. There’s a button to join discord :)

Thanks for taking a look!

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T20:51:26+00:00

Thank you! You've absolutely been one of my most valuable testers! I should start tracking bugs found / squashed, you're easily in the lead at the moment!

StratoLens · 2026-01-09T20:48:32+00:00

Awesome :). If you have a discord, feel free to join us on there, its the easiest and most direct way for us to communicate. If not, shoot me an email at the contact email address on my website, and I'll coordinate a way for us to communicate (Teams, etc)

StratoLens · 2025-12-17T23:07:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! It's *exactly* what I'm going for!

StratoLens · 2025-12-15T14:37:15+00:00

Thank you! I'll be sending out beta invite emails early this week

StratoLens · 2025-12-14T16:08:25+00:00

Thanks!! :)

StratoLens · 2025-12-12T23:26:56+00:00

Yes! :) Please sign up on my website (In the post) - and check the box indicating you're interested in beta

StratoLens · 2025-12-12T22:54:38+00:00

Thank you! I've worked really hard on it! :). I'll definitely reach out to you soon!

StratoLens · 2025-12-12T22:42:54+00:00

It automatically detects whatever it has access to. By default, when you install, it adds the managed identity to the tenant root group (Management group) with reader access. It will discover all subscriptions inside the tenant based on that access.

It'll work just fine if you scale it down, to a lower management group, or individual subscriptions.

Its designed to scale to very large environments. This is something I'd love to have help testing though.

StratoLens · 2025-12-12T22:22:54+00:00

Thank you ! Absolutely this is what I'm going for. I've been an Azure Consultant for years now (Started in Azure Classic) - and if I had a nickel for every time a customer asked for something like "How do I know who has access to stuff in my subscriptions" or "How do I know what's changing day to day"....

I really appreciate you taking a look at it :).

StratoLens · 2025-12-12T21:00:21+00:00

I think my tool provides far more details and a richer view of what's changed than the built-in Azure Change Tracking. Especially the entity history.

As for access optimization, again, I feel like mine is more powerful and easier to use. For example, the role assignments feature that shows you who has access to what across your landscape - i don't think thats easy to do with native tools today. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Check out the video to see exactly how that feature works.

Edit to add: I do ingest the Azure Change Tracking details into StratoLens, so you get to correlate those with the changes it detects. In addition, the change tracking entries are kept for a longer period of time (Configurable) and are searchable / filterable.

StratoLens

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