Troubleshooting
macOS asks for Keychain access
Saved credentials live in the OS keyring, not in CloudBridge's own files, so macOS may ask whether CloudBridge can use its Keychain item when the app reads a credential. Click Always Allow so it does not ask on every refresh, or Allow to be asked each time. If you click Deny, the app cannot read the credential and that account's fetch fails until you allow access.
AWS reports AccessDenied
The key authenticated, but its user lacks ce:GetCostAndUsage. Attach the Cost Explorer policy to the IAM user that owns the key. An organization service control policy can also deny Cost Explorer; and in an AWS Organization, member accounts only see Cost Explorer data if the management account allows it.
The Overview is empty after adding an account
- Nothing was fetched yet. Click Refresh on the Overview. A file-import source (Volcengine, OpenAI, Anthropic) has nothing to fetch: use Import on its row instead.
- The provider has not reported yet. Providers publish charges with a delay; AWS Cost Explorer can lag up to about 24 hours, so a brand-new account or today's spend may not appear at once. Try again later rather than using Force Refresh, which can incur Cost Explorer request charges.
- The window is too narrow. Early in the month MTD may hold little or nothing; switch to 30d or 12m.
- It is a balance-only source. DeepSeek's API reports a balance, not spend. Import its usage download for spend detail.
An account keeps failing to refresh
The menu bar panel and the Overview name the accounts that failed and why. An account that fails is retried after 15 minutes, then 30, doubling up to the refresh interval, and a notification says when it starts failing. If a provider answered but CloudBridge could not store the result — a full disk, for example — it does not fetch that month again within the refresh interval, so the same data is not paid for twice; Force Refresh retries at once. See Menu bar and background.
Windows SmartScreen blocks the app
The Windows build is not code-signed, so SmartScreen shows Windows protected your PC. After checking the file came from the official Releases page, click More info, then Run anyway.
Import errors
- "not UTF-8 text" — Alibaba Cloud and Volcengine consoles can produce GBK exports. Re-export as UTF-8 or save the file as CSV UTF-8 before importing.
- Unrecognized columns — parsers match known aliases for Chinese and English exports and provider field names. If a format has changed, report the error and column headers in an issue. Redact sensitive values; do not attach an unredacted bill.
- A month shrank after importing — an import replaces every month the file covers for that account, so a product-filtered export leaves only that product. Re-import the full, unfiltered bill.
- Token counts but no spend — a usage export carries no money; import the cost export instead. For DeepSeek, import the ZIP as downloaded rather than its
amount-*.csv.
A Cloudflare scan is refused
The scan says which of two things happened. Cloudflare did not accept this account's API token means the token is wrong or expired: check it on the Accounts page. The token cannot read … means the token is valid but lacks a service's Read permission; add the permissions listed under Cloudflare. A token without them still reads the bill.
An alert did not fire
- The Account budget rule has no budget to measure against. The rule does nothing for an account without a Monthly budget, whatever its threshold type. Set one on the Rules page.
- The spend started from nothing. The cost growth anomaly rule compares a service with its own last seven days, so a service that cost nothing has no baseline and never fires it. A budget rule on the month-end forecast covers that case: see Catch a runaway.
- The day is not in the ledger yet. Rules run on what has been fetched. The background refresh fetches an account once per refresh interval, and only while CloudBridge runs; see Menu bar and background.
- Notifications are off, or the alert was already open when the app started. Open alerts are listed on the Alerts page either way.
Still stuck
Questions the docs don't answer? Open an issue.