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/VisibilityKubecostOpenCost
TypePaid with Open Source optionsOpen Source
Cost VisibilityComprehensive, including CPU, memory, storage, network costsBasic for CPU, memory, and storage
Savings RecommendationsProvides optimization suggestions to reduce costsNone
Budgets and AlertsUsers can set budgets and receive alerts for overspendingNot available
External Service Cost AllocationIntegrates with cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) for cost trackingLimited to Kubernetes metrics only
Network Cost AllocationGranular breakdown of network traffic costsLacks detailed network cost monitoring
Historical Cost AnalysisDetailed historical data for analyzing cost trendsLimited historical data retention
Multi-Cluster Cost TrackingSupports cost tracking across multiple clustersPrimarily focused on single cluster