Quick take Most teams set up one budget alert at 100% and call it done. That alert fires the day the budget is already blown. A working setup needs three tiers (50% warn, 80% alert, 100% panic) and one in each cloud you actually use. Here is the click-by-click setup for AWS, GCP, and Azure in 2026, plus the four mistakes that quietly defeat the alerts. If you only have 60 seconds, this is the shape: Set three alert tiers per budget, not one. Warn at 50%, alert at 80%, panic at 100%. Route each t