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Recommendation

PerfectScale for Commitments analyzes your cloud usage and generates updated purchase recommendations throughout the month.

  • After onboarding, first-time Recommendation data typically appears within 90 minutes on AWS and within a few hours on Google Cloud. Until then, the tab may show empty or loading states.

  • Once data is available, recommendations refresh automatically as usage, portfolio, and pricing signals change.

Required permissions​

  • To view recommendations: PerfectScale Commitments Read Only or PerfectScale Commitments Admin permission.

  • To change policy: PerfectScale Commitments Admin permission.

View recommendations​

The Recommendation tab compares your active commitments to PerfectScale's recommended commitments. Recommendations reflect your inventory, expired commitments, planned purchases, settings, and cloud provider data.

Recommendation tab overview

  • The Auto-updated indicator in the page header shows when the recalculation was last run. Hover over it for the usage, portfolio, and pricing signals behind the update.

  • If your account has multiple commitment types enabled, use the tabs at the top of the page to view recommendations for a specific commitment type.

  • For AWS, if your account uses Flexsave for Compute, select Include Flexsave to add Flexsave commitments to the Current Commitment metric card and the chart. Recommended Commitment, laddering, and auto-purchase always exclude Flexsave commitments.

  • For Google Cloud Cloud SQL, commitment policies and settings are scoped per region. When you select the Cloud SQL tab, a region selector lets you view and manage each region independently.

Metric cards​

  • Recommended Commitment ($/hour): The target hourly commitment. The sum of the current commitment plus the additional hourly amount that PerfectScale recommends purchasing. When applicable, the card shows Additional commitment required with the delta in $/h.

  • Current Commitment ($/hour):

    • On AWS, this card is labeled based on the commitment type. The headline number shows only the Compute Savings Plan or Database Savings Plan hourly commitment for the selected payer account. Reserved Instances and EC2 Instance Savings Plans are excluded from the headline figure; when present, their hourly amounts appear in a caption below the value. The caption is hidden when both excluded amounts are zero.

    • On Google Cloud, the card shows the sum of all active hourly commitment rates for the selected billing account and commitment type.

  • Potential Additional Savings ($/month): Estimated monthly savings from reaching the recommended commitment. Based on your commitment policy, term, and prepayment settings.

    • If no additional savings are available, this card shows Optimized. The status is evaluated per commitment type tab; one commitment type may show as optimized while another still has potential savings.

This chart plots eligible usage against your commitment levels.

  • Eligible usage is on-demand spend on commitment-eligible services from your billing data, before commitment discounts.

  • Commitment series uses post-discount $/h.

Recommendation commitment and eligible usage chart

Settings:

  • Duration: Specifies the duration for the view. Options: Hour, Day, Week, and Month.

    The duration option changes the time bucket size and how much historical eligible usage the chart includes. For example, the last 24 hours at hourly granularity, the last 21 days by day, the last 16 weeks by week, or the last 6 months by month.

  • Customize: Specifies the series visibility.

Hover the info icon next to each legend for pricing details.

  • Hourly Eligible Usage Range ($/h): Highest and lowest hourly usage during the selected period. Valid when Duration is Day, Week, or Month.

  • Hourly Median Eligible Usage ($/h): Median hourly usage during the selected period. Valid when Duration is Day, Week, or Month.

  • Hourly Eligible Usage ($/h): Eligible usage at hourly granularity. Valid when Duration is Hour.

  • Current Commitment: Current active commitment level measured in hourly spend. A flat line matching the Current Commitment metric card.

  • Recommended Commitment: Recommended commitment level based on usage patterns and your commitment policy. A dashed line matching the Recommended Commitment metric card. Updates when you change the commitment policy or use Preview Mode.

  • Est. Equivalent Recommended Commitment: The estimated shelf-price $/h equivalent of the recommended commitment, based on the eligible usage included in the recommendation.

    Derived from the median hourly eligible usage over the trailing 60 days, multiplied by the estimated average coverage percentage. Because it uses a 60-day median, the line is a constant flat value and does not change when you switch chart granularity. Hidden when there is no eligible usage in the trailing window. Updates with policy changes and Preview Mode.

Commitment policy​

The Commitment policy dropdown lets you simulate how a different risk profile would affect the recommendation.

  • Conservative (Low risk): Commits only to your most stable usage, reducing the risk of underutilization. Reaches the target commitment more gradually.

  • Balanced (Recommended): Balances savings with a healthy buffer to absorb usage dips. Suitable for most workloads.

  • Max Savings: Targets higher coverage faster with the highest savings potential, but uses a smaller buffer that may increase underutilization risk if your usage decreases.

For Cloud SQL, a Region selector appears alongside the commitment policy selector. Select a region to load the recommendation and saved policy for that region.

Preview mode​

Selecting a different policy puts the page into Preview Mode.

The metric cards and chart update immediately to reflect the new policy. For Cloud SQL, if you switch regions while in preview mode, the preview clears and the page resets to the saved policy for the newly selected region.

Recommendation - Preview mode

To review the full impact and see a side-by-side comparison between your current and new policies, select Review Changes.

Recommendation tab - Review changes

  • For Cloud SQL, the dialog header also shows the selected region, and the current policy column reflects the region-specific saved policy.

  • For AWS, the dialog also shows the prepayment option.

  • If the proposed ladder is still calculating, the new policy column shows Calculating scheduled purchases instead of steps.

Select Confirm to apply the change.

  • In Requires Approval mode, if the updated purchase amount is higher than the previously approved amount, go to Planned Purchases and select Approve Target Commitment to re-approve the higher target.

  • In Autonomous Execution mode, PerfectScale continues purchasing toward the new target within your guardrails without requiring re-approval.

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