Three needs, three families of tools
Before you compare names, find the question you cannot answer today. It points to the family of tools to look at. One team can have two of these needs.
Put that question in one sentence before you open a pricing page, for example: finance cannot split the cluster bill between product teams. That sentence tells you what your test must prove.
- Kubernetes visibility: the bill shows machines, and you want to know which service or team uses them.
- Multi-cloud bill: several providers and accounts, and finance wants one shared reading.
- Automation: you know what to change, and you lack the time to apply it.
Need 1: see your Kubernetes costs
The real question here is who hosts the tool and how long you keep the history.
- OpenCost: free and open source under the Apache 2 license. It allocates costs by cluster, node, namespace or pod. You host it yourself.
- IBM Kubecost: Foundations is free and self-hosted, up to 250 cores with 15 days of metrics. The Enterprise tiers, self-hosted or SaaS, show no amount.
- Onicost: a service hosted in France. Free covers 1 cluster, 32 cores and 2 members over 31 days. Team starts at €39 per month before tax with 6 months of history, Business at €99 per month before tax with 13 months.
Need 2: read a multi-cloud bill
These tools start from the bill and from the accounts behind it. Look closely at the billing basis, often tied to your cloud spend, and at the providers covered beyond the large clouds.
- Vantage: public prices tied to tracked spend. Starter is free up to $2,500 of cloud spend, Pro costs $30 a month up to $7,500, Business $200 a month up to $20,000, and Enterprise is custom. Its integrations run from AWS, Azure and Google Cloud to Kubernetes, Datadog and Snowflake.
- Finout: a flat fee tied to the spend under management, with no per-seat billing, on quote. It covers AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI and Kubernetes, and offers EU and US data residency.
- Onicost: the Cloud space, with Team, connects AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Scaleway, with 5 accounts on Team and no limit on Business. The price follows the cores of your nodes, with no percentage of spend. The base fee also applies without a cluster.
Need 3: automate changes
Automation saves time, and it touches production. Ask which changes the tool applies, within which limits, and how you roll back. An announced saving is an estimate, and no saving is guaranteed.
- Cast AI: it sets requests from observed usage and moves eligible workloads to spot instances. Its homepage shows no amount and offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card.
- IBM Kubecost: its page names automated actions such as request sizing and namespace turndown.
- Vantage: Autopilot for AWS Savings Plans appears in its Pro, Business and Enterprise plans.
- Onicost: the scheduler stops and restarts environments according to your rules. Your team applies sizing changes.
Six criteria to check for each tool
Once you have chosen the family, ask each vendor the same questions. When the answer is not public, write it down as a question to ask.
- Displayed price: can you work out the cost without a sales call?
- Billing basis: cores, vCPUs, tracked spend or a yearly fee? What happens when your usage doubles?
- Starting: is there a free plan, or a trial with no card?
- Data location: in which country, with which host, for how long?
- Automation: which permissions does the tool ask for, and who approves a change?
- License: open source, or a commercial service?
Where Onicost fits
Onicost suits teams with a good part of their budget in Kubernetes, who want a price they can work out in advance and data in France. It fits less well if you must host the tool yourself, if you want to track SaaS or AI spend alongside cloud spend, or if you want automatic sizing in production. Those needs belong to the other tools named above.
If your need matches, Free covers one cluster up to 32 cores with no card, and the 14-day Team trial opens the Cloud space, detailed recommendations and the scheduler. If it does not, one of the tools named here will be a closer match.
Frequently asked questions
Which FinOps tool suits a small team?
Start from your need, then test on your own data. OpenCost, Kubecost Foundations, Vantage Starter and Onicost Free all let you start at no cost, each with its limits.
Do FinOps tools charge a percentage of cloud spend?
Not all of them. Vantage ties its plans to tracked spend, and Finout ties its flat fee to the spend under management. OpenCost is free. Onicost bills the cores of your nodes, with no percentage.
Why does this page not rank the tools?
Because the right tool depends on your need. Onicost is also one of the tools named here, and a ranking written by a vendor would carry little weight.