Overview

l4 commitments reads what your organization has already committed to, and what that commitment is earning. It answers the questions the Commitments page answers, plus one it cannot: whether a term is about to lapse, as an exit code a pipeline can act on.

cmt is an alias, so l4 cmt list and l4 commitments list are the same command.

Every subcommand is read-only. Nothing here buys, cancels or exchanges a commitment.

Subcommands

l4 export commitments writes the same ledger as CSV or JSON.

Which providers answer

AWS and Google Cloud both report. They do not report the same things, because the two clouds expose different data.

Google Cloud has no public on-demand equivalent to divide by, so there is no effective savings rate to compute. Committed Use Discount term and expiry come from an export that Google ships separately, and until it is enabled a Committed Use Discount has no end date on any surface.

Where a command cannot answer for the resolved provider it says so in one line and exits 0:

$ l4 commitments contracts --provider gcp
Marketplace contracts are measured for AWS only: none are collected for Google Cloud.

It does not print an empty table. An empty table reads as "you hold none of these", which is a different and wrong claim.

not measured is not zero

Where a figure was never measured, these commands print not measured rather than 0. The distinction is load-bearing in four places:

• A Savings Plan has no coverage. Cost Explorer cannot filter coverage by plan type, so what one plan covers is unanswerable. The column reads not measured. A 0.0% there would claim the plan covers none of your eligible usage.
• Google Cloud has no savings rate, for the reason above. summary prints not measured, never a rate derived from coverage.
• Google Cloud's expiring count is unmeasurable, not zero. A 0 would read as reassurance.
• Totals come from the API, never from summing a column. The monthly commitment amount is not populated on every term, so a client-side total would quietly understate the portfolio.

Picking a provider

Every command reports on one provider. Without --provider, the CLI resolves the first provider it can answer commitments for rather than the first one connected, so a Google Cloud organization with another provider connected first still lands on its own data. A named --provider is always honoured, whatever it is, because "does Azure hold anything" deserves an answer rather than a silent redirect.

summary

l4 commitments summary [flags]

Coverage, the commitment count, how many expire soon, and on AWS the effective savings rate split into the part a negotiated agreement earns and the part commitments earn. Then one row per service, with each instrument measured on its own.

The headline coverage figure is the same spend-weighted one l4 commitments coverage prints, from the same source, so the two commands cannot report different coverage for one estate.

Flags

Global flags apply. See CLI overview.

Examples

l4 commitments summary
l4 commitments summary --provider gcp
l4 commitments summary --period 2026-08 --scope all
l4 commitments summary --jq '.esr.data.totals.total_rate_pct'

The rate is reported alongside the share of spend it could be measured over. Where that share is below 100%, the command says so rather than presenting a rate for the whole bill.

list

l4 commitments list [flags]

One row per commitment across every account, soonest to expire first, with what a renewal protects and what right-sizing would recover kept in separate columns. They are different amounts and are never added: one is the loss avoided by renewing, the other is the saving from buying less.

Flags

A kind belonging to another provider is refused rather than sent. --kind cud --provider aws is a valid request that returns nothing, and nothing is exactly what reads as "you hold none of these".

Examples

l4 commitments list
l4 commitments list --basis list
l4 commitments list --kind ri --expiring-within 90d
l4 commitments list --provider gcp
l4 commitments list --jq '.data.rows[] | {id, expires: .expires_in_seconds}'

The JSON shape differs by provider, because the two clouds return different records. AWS rows arrive under .data.rows[], Google Cloud rows under .items[]. A script that reads both has to branch on the provider.

view

l4 commitments view <id>

The full record for one commitment: kind, term, payment option, dates, state, utilization, coverage, the accounts consuming it, and any recommendations attached to it.

A Savings Plan id is an ARN, so it contains colons and a slash. Quote it.

l4 commitments view ri-0a1b2c3d
l4 commitments view "arn:aws:savingsplans::111122223333:savingsplan/abc"
l4 commitments view ri-0a1b2c3d --json
l4 commitments view ri-0a1b2c3d --web

utilization

l4 commitments utilization [flags]

Utilization is commitment hours used over commitment hours purchased: am I getting value from what I bought. It is not coverage, which is eligible usage on a commitment over all eligible usage: how exposed am I to on-demand rates.

Each service is measured on its own. EC2 and RDS contract in vCPU while Redshift, ElastiCache, OpenSearch and MemoryDB contract in nodes, so a figure averaged across them would describe none of them.

Flags

Examples

l4 commitments utilization
l4 commitments utilization --instrument sp
l4 commitments utilization --granularity monthly --start 2026-01-01
l4 commitments utilization --service ec2

A plan's day series carries no coverage column at all, for the reason in not measured is not zero.

plan

l4 commitments plan [flags]

On-demand spend no commitment covers, split by platform and volatility, beside the purchases that would cover it.

Each slice is sized against its hourly floor rather than its average. Sizing against the average of a volatile base commits to more than the base can sustain, which strands part of the commitment for its whole term.

l4 commitments plan
l4 commitments plan --format csv > purchase-plan.csv

Buying is a savings recommendation, not a commitments command. plan names the recommendation ids, and l4 rec accept acts on one.

contracts

l4 commitments contracts

Marketplace and private-pricing relationships that bill like a commitment and appear in no provider commitment view, with the contracted floor separated from the metered leg that bills on top of it. The floor is paid whether or not you use it.

Availability

These commands need an API release that serves the commitments routes. Against an organization whose API does not yet, every one of them reports that and exits 0 rather than failing:

Commitments are not yet available for your account.

Related

• l4 commitments expiring: the CI gate
• l4 commitments renewal: sizing a repurchase
• l4 export commitments: the ledger as CSV or JSON
• l4 recommendations: where a purchase is actually decided
• Output formats: --json, --jq, --template and --quiet