OBJECTIVES: The number of surgical procedures that require anesthesia and the costs associated with them continues rising, in many cases influenced by the use of newer and more expensive anesthetics. Our aim was to develop a tool to assess the costs and resource use in anesthesia in Colombia. METHODS: An excel tool to calculate the resource use and costs of medications used for anesthesia was developed. Costs were derived from the hospital pharmacy in a third level institution in Bogota, Colombia, and validated with other reliable sources.  The model is capable of simulating the resource use and costs associated with specific procedures. It uses the subject’s age, sex, weight and height as variables to determine the dosages of the different drugs, as well as the time estimated for the procedure to determine resource utilization. Finally, the costs are calculated based on the previous variables and the specific anesthetic technique selected, identifying the different combinations of drugs, equipment, and adding a waste factor for the inhalation anesthetics. RESULTS: The 2 most common surgical procedures performed under general anesthesia in the institution, laparoscopic cholecystectomy and laparoscopic hysterectomy, were selected for the simulation using 3 common forms of anesthesia: balanced analgesic-based, balanced hypnotic-based. Each one of these forms of anesthesia uses a different set of drugs and dosages, and they could be used interchangeably according to the anesthesiologist preference in most cases. The results of the simulations showed that the resource use and the total cost of the anesthesia provided varied across these three forms, depending mainly on the length of the procedure and the patient’s characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: The use of tools to determine resource use and costs in procedures that require anesthesia may help physicians and decision makers to compare interchangeable forms of anesthesia to optimize their resources.