How Terrain Works
Is Your Tech Making or Losing You Money?
Connect your cloud, data, and AI costs. Ask your question in plain English. Get the answer in 30 seconds or less.
The Problem
Do you know if your tech is making or losing you money? A lot of CEOs can't answer that question and that's OK. The answer is usually buried across three separate tools, and pulling it together takes days.
You are accountable for every technology dollar, but no tool connects what you spend to what it returns. You do not need more dashboards. You need answers.
That's why we created Terrain. So you can get answers in 30 seconds or less. Ask in plain English and get the answer in plain English: what's working, what's wasting money, and what to do next.
Where you are on the ladder
The Plan
Connect. Ask. Decide.
Start with one proof source. Use read-only access. Get a source-truth-backed answer before you expand.
Connect Your Accounts
Connect supported sources with read-only access. Terrain reads billing and usage data from your cloud providers, data platforms, and AI services. We never touch your infrastructure, never modify resources, and never store cloud credentials.
- AWS, Azure, GCP. Connect all three or start with one
- Snowflake and Databricks data platform support
- Read-only access. No write access to your environment
- Cloud billing data stays under your access controls
Start with one proof source
Amazon Web Services
Billing and usage data
Microsoft Azure
Billing and usage data
Google Cloud
Billing and usage data
Snowflake + Databricks
Usage and credit data
> Why did AWS costs spike this week?
What Terrain can prove:
AWS compute spend increased in the latest period. The largest driver is prod-api usage.
Source truth:
AWS billing is current. Owner tags are missing on part of the spend.
Next step:
Review the service owner and decide whether to cap, fix, or defend this spend.
Save the answer when you need a decision your team can defend.
Ask in Plain English
Type questions like you'd ask a colleague. No SQL. No data joins. No pivot tables. Terrain understands context, analyzes your actual billing data, and responds with specifics, not generic advice.
Get Answers, Proof, and the Next Step
Terrain shows what the data can prove, what is missing, and the next step your team can take. Delivered to Slack, Teams, email, or the web app.
Root Cause When Proven
What changed, why, and which source the answer came from
Value Evidence
Cost, unit economics, and business denominators when the data supports them
Next Best Action
What to cut, fix, defend, cap, or investigate next
Multi-Channel Delivery
Slack, Teams, email, or web app
AI Cost Intelligence
Know Which AI Spend You Can Fund, Fix, Defend, Cap, or Stop
AI spend is growing across APIs, cloud providers, and data platforms. Terrain shows source truth, unit economics, model mix, and value evidence where the connected source supports it.
Model and Provider Spend
See model mix, provider spend, token usage, and native-unit cost where the connected source exposes it.
Token and Request Unit Economics
Track input tokens, output tokens, requests, cache behavior, and unit cost when those fields are available.
Source Truth and Coverage
Know which AI sources Terrain can see, which fields are missing, and which values cannot yet be defended.
Decision Actions
Ask why, configure rates, set guardrails, fold a metric into an objective, or mark missing evidence.
Supported AI Providers
> How much are we spending on AI APIs this month and which team is driving it?
What Terrain can prove:
AI spend is available for connected direct-provider and cloud-billed sources.
Terrain separates provider spend, model mix, token usage, and source freshness when the provider exposes those fields.
Still missing:
A defensible value number needs a denominator like revenue, margin, productivity, or quality. Terrain shows what is proven and what is still missing.
Capabilities
Everything You Need to Stop Guessing.
Every plan starts with source-truth-backed answers. Higher tiers add more sources, more team context, and more governance.
Waste Detection
Find idle, oversized, and orphaned resources when the data is fresh enough to defend
Forecasting
See forecastable spend and the missing history that blocks a reliable forecast
Anomaly Detection
See what changed, which source backs it, and who should investigate next
Right-Sizing
Review resource recommendations with source truth, freshness, and unavailable states
Value Evidence
Connect technology spend to business measures like revenue, margin, productivity, quality, or customer outcomes
Governance & Allocation
Tag enforcement, team attribution, and showback/chargeback reporting made simple
Decision Questions
Ask the Questions Your Team Already Debates.
Terrain turns cloud, data, and AI spend questions into answers your team can act on. Ask what changed, what to cut, what to defend, or what needs more evidence.
What can we stop?
Plain-English answer
- Which spend appears idle?
- Which resources look oversized?
- Which commitments are underused?
What can we fix?
Plain-English answer
- Which services need right-sizing?
- Where is tagging blocking accountability?
- Which storage tiers look wrong?
Can we defend AI spend?
Plain-English answer
- Which models drive cost?
- Which apps use the most tokens?
- Where is value evidence missing?
What should we defend?
Plain-English answer
- Which spend has business evidence?
- Which teams rely on it?
- Which decision needs a record?
Where did spend move?
Plain-English answer
- Did cloud, data, or AI drive the change?
- Which source changed most?
- What evidence is missing?
Will we miss budget?
Plain-English answer
- Is this month on track?
- What history supports the forecast?
- What blocks a reliable forecast?
Which platform spend is worth it?
Plain-English answer
- Which warehouses burn credits?
- Which jobs or clusters cost most?
- Where is value evidence missing?
What changed?
Plain-English answer
- Which source spiked?
- Which service drove it?
- Who should investigate?
Who owns it?
Plain-English answer
- Which team drove the spend?
- Which tags are missing?
- What needs a policy or guardrail?
Ask
Plain-English questions
One
Answer across cloud, data, and AI
Day 1
First read from one source
Ask in Slack, Teams, or the web app. Terrain answers in plain English and shows what the data can prove, what is missing, and what to do next.
The Stakes
With Terrain: Walk into your next budget meeting with one answer that covers cloud, data, and AI. Cost, value, and next action. Your engineers stop wasting 10 hours a week on cost detective work. The CFO trusts the numbers because they come from one source, not three stitched-together spreadsheets.
Without it: Every cost question stays a multi-day investigation. Your best people keep building spreadsheets instead of products. And the next time leadership asks 'can we defend this AI spend?', you're still saying 'we'll get back to you.'
Security
Enterprise-Grade Security, Read-Only by Design
When you connect cloud billing, Terrain reads the data inside your cloud account by default. We use read-only access. We never touch your infrastructure, never modify resources, and never store cloud credentials.
Read-Only Access
Zero write access to your cloud environment
Cloud Billing Stays Under Your Controls
Cloud billing data is read inside your account by default
Your Cloud by Default
Your cloud account, your access controls, your rules
Security Architecture
Your Guide
Built by Someone Who Lived Your Problem
"I spent 20 years helping the world's largest enterprises turn data and AI investments into business results, including roles at Google Cloud, Cloudera, and Hortonworks. The one problem I saw everywhere: teams had dashboards, not answers. They could see costs going up but could not say whether the tech was making or losing money. That is why I built Terrain."
Andrew Psaltis
Founder, Terrain / Dragonfly Rising
20+
Years in AI & Data
85+
Team Led at Google Cloud
APAC CTO
Drove Growth at Cloudera
Fortune 500
Enterprises Advised
You Do Not Need Another Dashboard. You Need the Answer.
That's why we created Terrain. So you can get answers in 30 seconds or less.
Stop guessing. Be the CEO who knows.
Make tech decisions based on real value not hype.