Bicep Cost Estimator

Bicep Cost Estimator estimates monthly Azure costs from Bicep and ARM templates before you deploy. The published CLI command is bce.

It currently ships as:

• a .NET CLI
• a VS Code extension backed by the CLI in LSP mode
• a GitHub Action for CI and pull request workflows
• a Docusaurus documentation site with browser and plain-text routes

Quick Start

Install the published CLI:

curl -sL https://bicepcostestimator.net/install.sh | bash
bce estimate --file path/to/main.bicep

The installer uses ~/.local/bin on Linux, /usr/local/bin on Intel macOS, and /opt/homebrew/bin on Apple Silicon by default. Set INSTALL_DIR to override that choice. If the install directory is not on PATH, the installer prints the export PATH=... command to run.

Run via Docker instead, without installing the CLI binary locally:

bce() {
  docker run --rm \
    -v "$PWD:/work" \
    -w /work \
    -v "$HOME/.bicep-cost-estimator:/root/.bicep-cost-estimator" \
    --entrypoint /app/bin/bce \
    ghcr.io/polatengin/washington:latest \
    "$@"
}

Add that function to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc, reload your shell, and then use bce like a normal command:

bce estimate --file ./main.bicep --output json

The wrapper works by starting the published website container, overriding the default startup command so it runs /app/bin/bce instead of the docs server, mounting your current working directory at /work so relative --file and --params-file paths keep working, and mounting ~/.bicep-cost-estimator so the pricing cache persists across runs. Docker is the only local dependency; the image is pulled automatically on first use.

Build from source instead:

git clone https://github.com/polatengin/washington.git
cd washington
make setup-cli
make build-cli
./src/cli/bin/Release/net10.0/bce estimate --file ./tests/fixtures/simple-vm.bicep

What It Does

• Compiles Bicep to ARM JSON through the Bicep CLI via the Azure.Bicep.RpcClient package
• Extracts nested resources, copy loops, and conditionally skipped resources
• Maps 87 Azure resource types to Azure Retail Prices API queries
• Queries pricing with pagination, retry, and a local 24-hour file cache
• Renders results as table, json, csv, or markdown

Documentation

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• CLI Commands
• VS Code Extension
• GitHub Action
• How Estimates Work
• Supported Resources
• Troubleshooting

Current Limitations

• Unsupported resource types are skipped with a warning.
• Spot and low-priority prices are excluded from default estimates.

Development

Common local workflows:

make setup-cli
make test-cli

make setup-extension
make build-extension

make setup-website
make build-website
make dev-website

make setup-cli restores the .NET dependencies needed for the CLI and tests. bce resolves the Bicep CLI at runtime through the Azure.Bicep.RpcClient nuget package.

Roadmap

The roadmap lives in docs/70-roadmap.md and on the documentation site at bicepcostestimator.net/roadmap.

License

MIT