This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Bhavik Limani
One of the biggest challenges in cloud cost management isn’t just knowing what you’ve spent — it’s knowing what you’re likely to spend, and why, and then being able to act before waste grows.
At Widle, we use Retool to help organizations forecast cloud costs with precision and accountability. Forecasting isn’t just about generating a number — it’s about helping engineering and finance teams make informed, proactive decisions.
What We Build in Retool
Here’s how we approach cloud spend forecasting using Retool:
- Time-Series Models for Forecasting We integrate historical billing data from AWS, Azure, and GCP (usually 6–12 months) into a centralized warehouse. Then we use SQL-based or Python-based models to project future usage trends.
→ Example: forecast = avg(daily_spend_last_90_days) * 30
You can customize the logic — weighted averages, seasonal adjustments, or even ML-based forecasts.
- Forecast vs Actual Spend Dashboards With Retool’s charting & component library, we deliver:
- Monthly & daily spend projections
- Team-wise or service-wise breakdowns
- Alerts when real-time costs exceed expected usage
Color-coded risk markers for overspend
Trigger-Based Recommendations
If projected spend exceeds your monthly budget, we configure triggers to:Send alerts to Slack or email
Flag costly SKUs or underutilized resources
Open tasks in Jira/Trello for FinOps review
This turns forecasts into real actions, not just passive charts.
Business Impact
One of our fintech clients reduced their month-end overspend by 22% after integrating forecast alerts into their workflow via Retool.
Their Retool app showed:
- Forecasted vs Actual trends by cost center
- A “Top 5 services by variance” report
- Historical deviations with annotation options
Now, engineering leads are more accountable and finance teams can plan ahead — with Retool at the center of it.
Why Retool for Forecasting?
- Fast integration with billing warehouses like BigQuery, Athena, Snowflake
- Developer-friendly for SQL + API mashups
- Visual interface to share forecasts across teams
- Easy to add forecasting logic, tags, custom formulas
Retool transforms forecasting from a spreadsheet mess to an interactive, reliable source of insight.
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Ready to bring cloud forecasting into your FinOps workflow?
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We’ll show you how in under 2 weeks — just email info@widle.studio to start.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Bhavik Limani