Exploring Kubecost: Variants, Alternatives, and More
Kubecost offers a self-hosted variants which we will install in our cluster. Beyond Self-Hosted Kubecost, KubeCost also offers Cloud version, even in Cloud version we have a free tier and Enterprise Tier. You can see the details by clicking here.
Beyond this there is also a fully OpenSource version of KubeCost which is called OpenCost which is under Apache 2 License and managed by CNCF community. Kubecost is build on this OpenCost. What is the difference then ? Here we go
| Feature/Visibility | Kubecost | OpenCost |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Paid with Open Source options | Open Source |
| Cost Visibility | Comprehensive, including CPU, memory, storage, network costs | Basic for CPU, memory, and storage |
| Savings Recommendations | Provides optimization suggestions to reduce costs | None |
| Budgets and Alerts | Users can set budgets and receive alerts for overspending | Not available |
| External Service Cost Allocation | Integrates with cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) for cost tracking | Limited to Kubernetes metrics only |
| Network Cost Allocation | Granular breakdown of network traffic costs | Lacks detailed network cost monitoring |
| Historical Cost Analysis | Detailed historical data for analyzing cost trends | Limited historical data retention |
| Multi-Cluster Cost Tracking | Supports cost tracking across multiple clusters | Primarily focused on single cluster |
