Allocate

• Latest Dynatrace
• Explanation
• 3-min read
• Published May 26, 2026

Cost allocation lets you assign Dynatrace DPS usage to customer-defined cost centers, products, or both. This gives you a transparent and detailed account of each cost center's Dynatrace expenditures and helps your organization optimize its budgets.

You can customize the use of these fields to fit your company's organizational framework:

The figure below shows how different components in a given Dynatrace environment can be assigned to different cost centers and products.

Cost Allocation overview showing assignment of cost centers and products

Overview

Cost allocation maps Dynatrace consumption to the cost centers, products, or teams in your organization. With allocations in place, every line item on your bill has a clear owner, which is the foundation for chargeback, showback, and team-level accountability. Allocation is enforced through tags applied at the OneAgent, Kubernetes, or telemetry-ingest layer, and analyzed in Dynatrace or exported for finance tooling.

Concepts

Cost center

A specific cost center within your organization. This is defined according to your organizational structure. Costs in Dynatrace can be allocated to specific cost centers.

Host tag

The parameter that assigns a host to a specific cost center or product. For more information, see Define tags and metadata for hosts.

Host property

Sometimes used as a synonym for "host tag." For more information, see Define tags and metadata for hosts.

Product

A single product, or group of products, offered by your organization. Costs in Dynatrace can be allocated to specific products.

Telemetry data

Generic term to refer to any single data point that is one of the following: log, trace, metric, or event.

Supported capabilities

The table below describes the rate card capabilities for which Cost Allocation is available.

In the case that Cost Allocation isn't available for the given capability, an alternative best practice is recommended.

Use cases