# Virtual Tags: Cost Allocation Across Every Provider

> Virtual tags for cost allocation, showback and chargeback across Cloud, SaaS, and AI. See spend by team, product, or any other dimension, tagged or not.

Source: https://levelfour.ai/virtual-tags

Updated: 2026-11-05

See spend by team, product, or any other dimension across Cloud, SaaS, and AI, ready for showback and chargeback. You build the rules from your own bills and apply them up to 12 months back.

[Read the docs](https://docs.levelfour.ai/virtual-tags)

## Cost allocation with no tagging project

Native tags stop at each provider, and plenty of spend never carries one: shared accounts, support fees, AI seats billed per person. Virtual tags read the bills instead, so finance gets one view of Cloud, SaaS, and AI spend and your engineers retag nothing.

- **Build tags from your own bills**: Define tag keys and values with rules, and fix tagging hygiene without waiting on engineering. You tick accounts, services, people and workloads off your providers' bills, and LevelFour runs each new cost line through your rules.
- **Unify tags across every provider**: One tag covers your cloud bills, AI tools, data platforms and Kubernetes clusters, including providers with no native tags. A team's database, its pods and its AI seats land on one value, ready for showback and chargeback.
- **Re-allocate shared costs**: Give each team its share of support plans, shared clusters and AI subscriptions. You split them by percent, evenly, the way another tag already divides cost, or by the usage you send.
- **Back-fill history and override provider tags**: Apply a new tag up to 12 months back, and your first report already shows a trend. If a provider tag and your rule disagree, you choose which one wins. You also name the line for cost no rule claims.
- **Create and edit tags with AI agents, over MCP**: Ask an AI agent to create a tag, change a rule or rename a value. It picks from the values on your bills and previews the change before saving, so a new allocation takes one sentence. [See virtual tags over MCP](https://docs.levelfour.ai/virtual-tags#without-the-dashboard)
- **Track tagging coverage**: See how much of your spend carries a tag and how much stays untagged, across provider and virtual tags. You also get 19 predefined tags, such as AI Spend and the FOCUS fields, before you write a rule.

## Virtual tags documentation

The docs cover rules, splits and predefined tags. The API, the CLI and the SDKs read and write the same tags.

[Read the docs](https://docs.levelfour.ai/virtual-tags)

## Virtual tags FAQ

### What is a virtual tag?

A virtual tag is a tag key LevelFour assigns to your cost from rules you set, beside the tags your providers report. You use it to group spend by team, product, or any other dimension.

### How are virtual tags different from provider tags?

Provider tags sit on each resource, and each provider has its own. Virtual tags are rules that read the bill, so they reach untagged resources, shared costs and providers with no tags. They can also reuse the provider tags you have, such as env and Environment.

### Do virtual tags change anything at my providers?

No. LevelFour assigns the value in its own reports, and your resources keep the tags they have.

### Which providers can a virtual tag read?

Any provider you connect: cloud bills, AI tools such as Claude Code or Cursor, observability and data platforms, and Kubernetes clusters running the LevelFour agent.

### Can a virtual tag apply to past cost?

Yes. Apply to past cost starts on and goes back up to 12 months. LevelFour reprocesses those months in the background, and the tag's page shows the progress.

### How do I split a shared cost?

Split by percent shares it between values you set, Split evenly shares it equally, Split by cost follows how another tag already divides cost, and By telemetry divides it by the usage you send.

### What are predefined tags?

LevelFour keeps 19 ready-made tags in your organization, such as AI Spend, Marketplace Spend and the FOCUS fields. They are read only, and Duplicate gives you a copy to edit.

### Can an AI agent create and edit virtual tags?

Yes. Over the MCP server, an AI agent such as Claude or Cursor can create a tag, change its rules and rename its values, and preview the result before saving. The CLI keeps tags in files you apply from a terminal, and the API and the SDKs work with them too.

## About LevelFour

The FinOps platform that actually cuts costs. One system of record for Cloud, SaaS, and AI spend. LevelFour applies each saving, or your engineers merge it as code.

- **Cloud Savings**: 30% success fee on savings found and applied. No hidden charges, only pay on what you actually save.
- **Pro**: $30 per month · Up to $2,500 spend/mo
- **Scale**: $200 per month · Up to $7,500 spend/mo
- **Enterprise**: Custom · Unlimited spend

[Pricing](https://levelfour.ai/pricing.md) · [Guide for agents (llms.txt)](https://levelfour.ai/llms.txt) · [Documentation](https://docs.levelfour.ai) · MCP server: `https://mcp.levelfour.ai/mcp`