Quickstart

This guide walks you through connecting your first cluster. From sign-up to seeing live cost data takes under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

A Kubernetes cluster (v1.24+) with kubectl access
Helm 3 installed locally
Cluster admin permissions (required for RBAC resources)

Step 1 — Create your account

Go to app.cost-pilot.com/register and create an account. You’ll be taken to the onboarding screen.

Step 2 — Create a cluster

In the dashboard, navigate to Nodes → Clusters and click Add cluster. Give it a name and choose your cloud provider and region.

CostPilot uses this metadata to apply the correct per-instance pricing for your nodes. If you’re running a self-hosted cluster, select Custom and enter a per-node hourly rate.

Step 3 — Generate an API key

After creating the cluster record, CostPilot generates a Cluster API Key. This is a secret token the agent uses to authenticate metric ingestion.

Copy the key — you’ll need it in the next step. You can always rotate it later from the cluster settings page.

Step 4 — Install the agent

Add the CostPilot Helm repository:

helm repo add costpilot https://charts.cost-pilot.com
helm repo update

Create a namespace and a Kubernetes Secret for your API key:

kubectl create namespace costpilot
kubectl create secret generic cp-agent-secret \
  --namespace costpilot \
  --from-literal=cluster-api-key=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE

Install the chart:

helm upgrade --install costpilot costpilot/agent \
  --namespace costpilot \
  --set backend.ingesterEndpoint=eu

ℹ Note

Use backend.ingesterEndpoint=us if your account is on the US region. Check Settings → Account to confirm your region.

Step 5 — Verify the agent is running

Check that the operator and agent pods are healthy:

kubectl get pods -n costpilot

You should see output like:

NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cost-pilot-operator-xxx-yyy         1/1     Running   0          45s
costpilot-agent-xxx-aaa             1/1     Running   0          30s
costpilot-agent-xxx-bbb             1/1     Running   0          30s
costpilot-agent-xxx-ccc             1/1     Running   0          30s

The operator manages three agent replicas with leader election — one leader collects and ships metrics, two followers stand by for failover.

Step 6 — See your first cost data

Return to the dashboard. Within 60–90 seconds of the agent starting, the Dashboard will show live cost data for your cluster.

If no data appears after 2 minutes, check the agent logs:

kubectl logs -n costpilot -l app=costpilot-agent --tail=50

Look for shipping metrics log lines. If you see authentication errors, verify the secret name matches cp-agent-secret or your custom secrets.agent.clusterApiKeySecretName value.

Next steps: Read the Agent Installation guide for full configuration options, or skip to the Onboarding Walkthrough to understand what you’re seeing in the dashboard.