KUBECOST-OPENCOST

Kubecost OpenCost Kubernetes cost allocation CNCF.

Definition

Kubecost / OpenCost concepts: (1) Cost Allocation: distributes cloud costs (EC2 compute + EBS storage + networking + load balancers) into Kubernetes pods via resource requests (CPU + memory + GPU + storage requested per pod), labels-based grouping (namespace, deployment, label app=, etc.). (2) Idle Costs: identifies unused capacity (cluster overprovisioning, idle pods, idle nodes), waste reporting percentage. (3) Optimization Recommendations: rightsizing pods (request vs usage gap), Spot instances + Reserved Instances + Savings Plans recommendations. (4) Multi-cluster + Multi-cloud: federation costs across multiple clusters EKS + AKS + GKE + on-prem. (5) Integrations: Prometheus (metrics source), Grafana (dashboards), Slack/Teams alerts. Pricing Kubecost commercial: free Open Source (Helm install kubecost/cost-analyzer chart), Free Tier limited 10 nodes, Business + Enterprise paid tiers $250/cluster/month+ multi-cluster federation + advanced features. OpenCost CNCF Sandbox 2022: standalone OSS Apache 2.0, Helm chart kubecost/opencost, FOCUS spec adapter, ~50000+ installs production worldwide.

Origin

Kubecost founded 2019 by Webb Brown + Ajay Tripathy ex-Google ; Series A $25M 2021 Coatue ; ~5000 paying customers 2024 ; OpenCost donated CNCF Sandbox June 2022.

Example in context

Adobe Kubernetes platform ~50 production clusters EKS multi-region deploys Kubecost Enterprise federate cost monitoring: ~5000 namespaces tracked, identification ~$10M annual waste via idle pods + over-requested resources, optimization tickets engineering teams.

Related terms

• CAST AI — alternative Kubernetes FinOps.