Infracost
Infracost estimates cloud infrastructure costs from code, helping teams identify expensive changes and enforce spending policies before deployment.
Why it caught my attention
Cloud cost surprises often begin as ordinary infrastructure changes that nobody recognised as expensive. Infracost brings the financial impact into the development process, while decisions are still easy to change. That creates an opportunity for engineers to prevent unnecessary spending rather than investigate it afterwards.
What problem does this actually solve?
Infracost could be worth considering if you recognise any of these challenges.
Unexpected infrastructure cost increases
Estimates monthly cost changes before deployment, helping teams identify expensive configurations before they affect cloud bills.
Limited visibility during code reviews
Shows projected spending alongside proposed infrastructure changes, giving reviewers financial context without switching to billing tools.
Inconsistent cloud spending controls
Checks changes against configured budgets, tagging requirements and FinOps policies, helping teams apply consistent cost controls.
Existing cloud waste remains unresolved
Identifies selected waste in running AWS environments and helps teams trace problems back to infrastructure code.
Is this a good fit for you?
A quick way to see if Infracost is relevant for your situation.
- Your team provisions cloud infrastructure using Terraform or other supported code formats.
- You want cost estimates included in infrastructure pull requests.
- You need consistent budget, tagging or FinOps policy checks.
- Your engineers use supported IDEs or AI coding agents.
- You manage AWS infrastructure and want code-based remediation of existing waste.
- You mainly need historical billing analysis without infrastructure code workflows.
- Your infrastructure is managed manually without supported code or repository integrations.
How does it work?
In practice, the workflow looks something like this:
Set up Infracost with a supported repository, CI/CD pipeline, IDE or coding agent, and authenticate using an Infracost account.
Infracost reads supported infrastructure definitions, identifies resources and configurations, and retrieves relevant cloud pricing to calculate estimated monthly costs.
Examine estimated spending changes and, where enabled, policy violations directly in your development environment or pull request.
Change expensive resource choices, correct policy issues or request approval when configured cost guardrails require additional review.
What else should I know?
A few important things to be aware of before you investigate further.
Estimates depend on usage assumptions
Usage-based charges require assumptions or supplied values; actual bills may differ because of consumption, discounts and unsupported resources.
Advanced controls require paid plans
Free cost estimation is available, but centralised FinOps policies, custom pricing, guardrails and remediation workflows require higher plans.
Cloud access varies by feature
Code-based estimation does not require cloud credentials; analysing existing AWS resources through Infracost Fix requires read-only account access.
Infrastructure compatibility needs checking
Support varies across infrastructure languages, cloud services and integrations; confirm coverage for your specific resources and workflows.
Think Infracost could fit your environment?
Visit the Infracost website to find out more, request a demo or speak to their team.
Something you'd like to know about Infracost?
Is there something I haven't covered in my research? Send me your question and I'll look into it and reply personally by email.