Meter Dimensions

5 min

Dimensions

Amberflo’s Metering Service enables you to answer key questions in real time with precision: What was used, by whom, when, where, and how much? Amberflo Meter Event data structure encapsulates this in the following way -

What	Meter name and API name
Whom When How much Where	Customer ID or Business Unit ID Timestamp Meter value Dimensions

To support this, you can add dimensions to your meter definitions. Dimensions are custom key-value pairs included with each meter event, allowing you to enrich the event data with contextual metadata.

What Are Dimensions?

Dimensions are the schemaless portion of a meter definition. They provide a flexible way to customize the payload of a meter event without predefined constraints.

This allows you to capture and associate metadata such as:

Where the usage originated (e.g., cloud provider, region, zone)

Additional attribution beyond customer ID (e.g., cluster, project, department)

Event state or status

Any other business-specific markers

You are free to define any number of dimensions that reflect the context of your usage data.

Important note: If Dimensions are not defined ahead of time, new ones are automatically created upon ingestion.

How Dimensions Are Used

Grouping and Filtering

Amberflo automatically groups and filters meter events by their dimension values. For example, if you define a dimension called cloud_provider with values such as AWS, Azure, or Google, Amberflo will automatically sort, group, and make those values filterable in the UI and APIs.

Pricing and Discounts

Dimensions are not only useful for analytics but also play a key role in constructing pricing plans and discount rules. You can use them to create pricing tiers, apply discounts, or define rate overrides based on specific dimension values.

Usage Explorer

Amberflo’s Usage Explorer provides real-time visibility into aggregated meter events, grouped and pivoted by dimension. This helps you analyze trends, drill into usage patterns, and segment your customers more effectively.

Query API

The Query API allows you to extract aggregated usage data by dimension, enabling integration with external tools or downstream billing systems.

Below are some common dimension types, but you are free to create any dimensions specific to your use case and domain:

Additional resource or application IDs

Department name

Cluster name or Project name

Cloud Region, Zone, etc.

Deployment environment

Customer type

Service version more...

For Public Cloud and Department Chargebacks

{
      "meter_name":"cloud_bedrock_input_tokens",
      "meter_value":1725,
      "time":1619445706909,
      "dimensions":{
         "business_unit_id":"us-east-2",
         "region":"us-east-2",
         "model":"anthropic_claude_3.7_sonnet"
     }

For Customer Billing:

{
      "customerId":"Wayne Enterprises, Inc.",
      "meter_name":"ApiCalls",
      "meter_value":575,
      "time":1619445706909,
      "dimensions":{
         "region":"us-east-2",
         "tenant_type":"Tech"
     }