15 Best Cloud Cost Management Tools to Control Spending

Is your company’s cloud bill skyrocketing every month despite promises of cost savings from the cloud?

As public cloud adoption grows rapidly across industries, many companies get caught off guard by their ballooning monthly cloud expenses.

Before you know it, your cloud bill has doubled year-over-year!

But getting cloud costs under control doesn’t have to be a losing battle.

In this blog post, we present the 15 best cloud cost management tools to monitor usage, detect inefficiencies, allocate spending, forecast budgets, and optimize your multi-cloud environment.

With the ability to identify cost-saving opportunities and eliminate waste, you can master your cloud spend.

What Is Cloud Cost, and Why Is It Important to Manage It?

Cloud costs represent the ongoing operational expenses your business incurs related to running workloads and leveraging resources from public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

These expenses stack up from various cloud services usage, including:

• Compute and infrastructure fees for servers, databases, storage, networking, etc.
• Data transfer and network bandwidth charges for moving data in and out of the cloud.
• Add-on SaaS tools for monitoring, security, and management.
• Technical support and professional services plans.
• Licensing costs for proprietary software and databases.

Many enterprises spend over $2 million annually on public cloud as adoption grows rapidly.

Over 80% of IT teams face executive pressure to reduce cloud spend due to uncontrolled costs.

So why does getting a handle on cloud expenses matter?

Here are 4 key reasons:

1. Prevent budget overruns: Monitoring usage and costs ensures spending stays within limits and surprises are avoided. Cloud expenses add up quickly without governance!

2. Optimize resources: Identifying waste from inefficiencies and rightsizing ensures smooth operations without overspending.

3. Enable accountability: Allocating cloud costs by department, team, application, etc. provides transparency into where money is being spent.

4. Improve forecasting: Tracking spending trends allows accurate future projections, facilitating better planning.

With that said, below are the top 15 cloud cost management software you can start using today.

1. CloudZero

CloudZero is an AI-powered cloud cost management platform enabling organizations to gain complete visibility and control over their cloud spending across AWS, Azure, GCP, and other providers.

CloudZero’s automatic cost allocation capability allocates 100% of cloud expenses by custom dimensions like teams, applications, and environments.

This eliminates the need for manual tagging and provides instant clarity into the true cost of ownership.

It also enables flexible analysis of spending from perspectives tailored to different stakeholders like engineering, product, and finance.

Additionally, CloudZero identifies abnormal usage spikes through continuous monitoring and alerts on cost anomalies.

It also surfaces actionable optimization opportunities for engineers to improve cloud resource efficiency.

What-if modeling and forecasting empower data-driven decisions around new deployments and budgets.

With an intuitive user interface and dedicated FinOps coaching, CloudZero is designed for rapid time-to-value.

Key features of CloudZero

• Automated cost allocation
• Granular cost analytics
• Anomaly detection
• Rightsizing recommendations
• Budget forecasting
• FinOps integrations

2. Apptio Cloudability

Apptio Cloudability is a leading SaaS platform giving comprehensive visibility into public cloud usage and costs across AWS, Azure, and GCP to control spending.

With continuous monitoring of cloud expense data from raw provider bills, Cloudability offers complete and granular visibility normalized across multi-cloud environments.

This eliminates blind spots for accurate cost allocation and chargeback.

Key capabilities like automated anomaly detection, reserved instance recommendations, and intelligent rightsizing ensure you optimize cloud resources proactively.

It also enables accurate budget forecasting using historical spending analytics to prevent surprise overruns.

Furthermore, custom reports and role-based dashboards facilitate collaboration between IT, Finance, and Dev teams for shared accountability.

Key features of Apptio Cloudability

• Unified cloud cost visibility
• Automated cost allocation
• Optimization recommendations
• Anomaly detection
• Budget forecasting
• Custom analytics and reporting

3. Harness

Harness Cloud Cost Management provides granular visibility, optimization, and governance capabilities to gain control over multi-cloud costs.

It breaks down spending by teams, applications, environments, and cloud resources like nodes and pods to enable accurate cost allocation.

The unique AutoStopping feature automatically shuts down idle cloud resources, powering them on when activity resumes.

Harness also enables governance through budget thresholds, anomaly detection, and integration with CI/CD pipelines to enforce policies pre-deployment.

Unlike other tools focused solely on FinOps users, Harness CCM provides self-service access for developers.

Engineers can view cost and utilization data for their resources and get actionable recommendations to optimize spending without compromising velocity.

Key features of Harness

• Granular visibility into usage and spend
• AutoStopping capability saves unused resources
• Optimizations for low-cost instance usage
• Anomaly detection for budgets
• CI/CD policy enforcement
• Self-service access and recommendations for developers
• Native support and integrations for multi-cloud

4. AWS Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer is a native cloud cost analytics service that enables you to easily visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time.

It comes with interactive graphs and tables that provide a visual representation of cost and usage data.

You can filter, break down, and drill into your spending by dimensions like service, account, region, etc. This simplifies spend analysis and drives productivity.

Forecasting capabilities predict your future costs and usage, so you can plan budgets and right-size commitments to meet actual needs.

The machine learning models provide accurate forecasts based on your historical spending patterns.

Moreover, custom reports can be saved for reuse, while pre-configured reports provide one-click insights into key spending areas like EC2 and Marketplace.

Data history of up to 13 months helps uncover usage trends and anomalies. This extended view unlocks richer insights to understand growth trajectories and seasonal peaks.

With Cost Explorer tightly integrated into AWS, you benefit from an easy setup and no overhead of managing additional tools.

Key features of AWS Cost Explorer

• Interactive cost and usage visualization
• Forecasting for budgets and planning
• Custom and pre-configured reporting
• Anomaly detection
• RI recommendations
• Data analysis and export
• Cost Explorer API

5. Kubecost

Kubecost is an open-source Kubernetes cost monitoring and optimization tool that provides real-time visibility into cluster resource usage and spending.

It breaks down costs by namespaces, pods, deployments, or any custom Kubernetes label. This granular visibility enables teams to see exactly where money is being spent in the cluster.

Kubecost also allocates aggregate costs to organizational concepts like departments, applications, or environments.

It surfaces actionable rightsizing recommendations based on analyzing actual resource requests versus usage over time.

Additionally, configurable alerts and anomaly detection identify unexpected cost increases or resource usage spikes, enabling governance of cluster spending.

Kubecost integrates billing data from AWS, Azure, GCP, and other clouds to give a single pane of glass for full infrastructure cost visibility.

The open-source tool can be installed directly into Kubernetes clusters in just minutes, while paid Kubecost versions offer additional enterprise capabilities.

Key Features of Kubecost

• Granular visibility into in-cluster resource usage
• Cost allocation by Kubernetes labels
• Optimization recommendations
• Anomaly detection and alerting
• Cloud cost integration

6. CloudCheckr by Spot

CloudCheckr by Spot is a robust, enterprise-grade cloud management platform. It is purpose-built to help large companies optimize costs, utilization, security, and compliance across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid cloud environments.

With unified visibility into usage and spending across different accounts, services, and regions, CloudCheckr enables organizations to quickly identify inefficiencies, anomalies, and savings opportunities across their cloud footprint.

Specifically, CloudCheckr provides granular visibility into historical spending and usage trends to inform strategic decisions around instance types, Reserved Instance purchases, resource allocation, budgets, and headcount planning.

It surfaces actionable recommendations tailored to your usage patterns for transformational cloud cost optimization.

Moreover, with over 600 out-of-the-box best practice assessments CloudCheckr continuously monitors infrastructure security and compliance against benchmarks like CIS, ISO, PCI, HIPAA, etc.

Key features of CloudCheckr

• Savings tracking to quantify cost reductions
• Right-sizing recommendations to improve efficiency
• Security and compliance monitoring to reduce risk
• Custom analytics for data-driven decisions
• Forecasting to assist in planning and budgets

7. CAST AI

CAST AI is an innovative Kubernetes cost optimization platform that helps companies cut their cloud costs.

It brings together powerful cost monitoring, optimization, and automation capabilities into one integrated solution specifically tailored for Kubernetes environments.

CAST AI provides full visibility into Kubernetes spending across multiple cloud providers, with the ability to break down costs by cluster, namespace, label, deployment, and more.

Leveraging advanced analytics, CAST AI can automatically adjust resource requests and limits to match workloads’ real-time needs.

Through its scheduling algorithms, CAST AI optimally consolidates workloads onto the fewest servers possible while respecting resource limits and availability requirements.

Custom alerts can be configured to flag anomalous spending or usage, allowing rapid response to issues before costs escalate.

Key features of CAST AI

• Real-time cost monitoring and analytics
• Automated rightsizing
• Optimized bin packing
• Autoscaling
• Cloud cost alerting
• Seamless integration

8. Densify

Densify is a cloud optimization platform that leverages automation and machine learning to align cloud resource allocation with application needs, improving efficiency and reducing waste.

Its optimization recommendations span major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Densify analyzes historical workload patterns to determine the optimal configuration for computing, databases, auto-scaling groups, and more.

For example, by optimizing auto-scaling groups, Densify can deliver up to 50% cost savings by preventing unused capacity.

Densify also seamlessly integrates recommendations into CI/CD pipelines via infrastructure as code tools like Terraform. This further drives cloud deployment efficiency.

Key features of Densify

• Automated rightsizing based on actual utilization
• Visibility into usage metrics like CPU and memory
• Collaboration through ITSM workflows
• Infrastructure as Code integration

9. Flexera One

Flexera One is a comprehensive cloud cost optimization platform that provides unified visibility and intelligent automation to control multi-cloud spending.

It offers a single pane of glass view into usage, costs, and discounts across cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP. This eliminates blindspots through accurate cost allocation.

Additionally, Flexera One provides actionable rightsizing recommendations by analyzing resource utilization over time. This ensures efficient infrastructure sizing to meet actual needs and prevent overprovisioning waste.

It also detects abnormal spending spikes through continuous anomaly detection. Custom policies can trigger alerts and automation actions to respond quickly.

What-if modeling capabilities empower IT and Finance teams to make data-driven decisions on budgets, deployments, and procurements.

Finally, dedicated FinOps coaches help organizations adopt best practices to continuously improve cloud efficiency.

Key features of Flexera One

• Automated and accurate cost allocation
• Intelligent rightsizing recommendations
• Anomaly detection for governance
• Advanced analytics for planning
• Dedicated FinOps coaching

10. nOps

nOps is a cloud-native cost management platform that leverages automation, analytics, and AI to manage cloud spending.

The Cost Optimization capabilities use machine learning to identify opportunities to rightsize EC2 instances, eliminate unused capacity, and increase spot and reserved instance usage.

This drives efficiency at scale to significantly reduce AWS costs within days.

Furthermore, nOps analyzes historical usage patterns and recommends optimal Reserved Instance purchases based on actual needs.

nOps also provides enhanced visibility into infrastructure usage and changes across all linked AWS accounts through customizable dashboards.

These insights help teams make better decisions to optimize cloud costs.

Finally, nOps enables easy automation of cost optimization actions through integration with native AWS services like EventBridge.

One-click optimizations drive efficiency without disrupting developer velocity.

Key features of nOps

• Cost optimization
• Commitment management
• Automation and efficiency
• Automatic cloud account onboarding
• Pay-for-what-you-save pricing

11. Tanzu CloudHealth

Tanzu CloudHealth is a cloud management platform that provides comprehensive visibility, control, and automation to optimize costs across multi-cloud environments.

It offers a bird’s eye view into usage, costs, discounts, and recommendations across AWS, Azure, GCP, and other clouds.

This unified visibility eliminates blindspots through accurate cost allocation.

Additionally, Tanzu CloudHealth enables policy-based governance through thresholds, alerts, and integration with operations tools to enforce standards. This facilitates cost oversight.

It also provides intelligent recommendations for optimizing spend, including automated rightsizing and Purchase Plan guidance based on actual utilization.

Furthermore, Tanzu CloudHealth helps organizations mature their FinOps practices over time through benchmarking, coaching, and sharing best practices.

Key features of Tanzu CloudHealth

• Unified visibility
• Intelligent optimization
• Policy-based governance
• Maturity benchmarking
• Dedicated FinOps coaching

12. Zesty

Zesty is a cloud cost optimization platform that assists organizations in slashing cloud bills, reducing manual effort, and maintaining optimal application performance.

By dynamically adjusting compute, storage, and container resources based on real demand, Zesty enables continuous and automated optimization tailored to fluctuating business needs.

This eliminates reliance on inaccurate forecasts and manual tuning of cloud infrastructure by engineering teams.

Zesty provides savings of up to 60% on EC2 costs through machine learning-driven management of AWS Reserved Instance commitments according to changing requirements.

The “Commitment Manager” capability flexibly adapts RI coverage to achieve optimal cost reductions without the risk of over-provisioning.

Additionally, the “Zesty Disk” offer delivers up to 80% lower storage costs by automatically expanding and shrinking volumes to match real-time usage.

This maintains consistent application performance.

Key features of Zesty

• Automated compute optimization
• Storage cost reduction
• Container resource tuning
• Continuous anomaly detection
• Flexible Reserved Instance management
• Real-time infrastructure monitoring

13. Virtana

Virtana is an enterprise-grade cloud cost management platform to optimize your public cloud spending through intelligent visibility, automation, and control.

It provides a unified view of cloud resource consumption and associated costs across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

Virtana offers an accurate and granular understanding of true cloud costs by leveraging per-instance visibility into usage metrics and discounted pricing.

Virtana analyzes past workload patterns and resource utilization to provide policy-driven recommendations that rightsize cloud infrastructure based on optimal cost, performance, and risk tradeoffs.

It identifies abnormal usage or spending spikes through continuous monitoring across cloud environments, allowing rapid response to issues before costs escalate.

Virtana extrapolates historical usage data and trends to provide reliable 12-month projections of future cloud spending at both aggregate and granular levels.

Additionally, Virtana provides easy-to-understand, interactive reports breaking down cloud costs and discounts by instances, resources, or custom tags.

Key features of Virtana

• AI-based rightsizing recommendations
• Accurate cost visibility
• Anomaly detection
• Forecasting models
• Custom policies

14. ProsperOps

ProsperOps is an automated cloud cost optimization software specifically tailored for AWS and GCP environments.

It leverages proprietary algorithms and artificial intelligence to provide continuous cost governance without any manual overhead.

ProsperOps automates the entire process of reserving instances and managing savings plans to ensure maximal cloud discounts are captured.

A key value proposition of ProsperOps is its purpose-built capabilities for cloud resellers and MSPs. It supports flexible cost allocation and showback models to maximize partner margins.

It handles time-consuming discount management and reserved instance tuning automatically in the background.

Unlike some cloud cost management tools that create friction with engineering teams, ProsperOps handles optimization in the background without engineering involvement, protecting developer velocity.

Key features of ProsperOps

• Automated and continuous cloud cost optimization
• Enables accurate cost allocation and accountability
• Eliminates manual overhead for FinOps teams
• No engineering tradeoffs or friction are required
• Battle-tested platform with AWS Competency

15. Finout

Finout is a holistic cloud cost optimization solution engineered to empower businesses to visualize, control, and reduce their cloud spend across diverse environments.

Finout provides the necessary tools for FinOps, DevOps, and Finance teams to gain insights, optimize costs, and drive ROI from cloud investments.

Its unified dashboard (MegaBill) coupled with virtual tagging breaks down cloud spending and identifies inefficiencies with precision, aiding the conversion of expenditure into unit costs.

Leveraging ML algorithms and a suite of optimization tools, Finout enables you to curb anomalies in spend and put in place cost-saving measures.

Finout integrates with AWS, GCP, Azure, and popular services like Kubernetes and Snowflake, ensuring flexibility and compatibility.

What’s more, Finout facilitates collaboration across teams through tailored, real-time dashboards, insightful FinOps reports, and more.

Key features of Finout

• Unified visibility into cloud costs (MegaBill)
• Virtual tagging for precision cost allocation
• Anomaly detection algorithms
• Integration with major cloud providers
• Customizable dashboards and reporting

And There You Have It…

With cloud adoption poised to expand further across industries, now is the time to assess and implement a trusted cloud cost optimization platform aligned to your environment.

The comprehensive set of top recommendations here offers a launch pad to find the right solution that will provide the visibility, automation, and control necessary to master multi-cloud usage and spending over the long term.

Which one(s) will you evaluate further to meet your cost governance needs?