In this piece, we run through the 16 best cloud cost optimisation tools for 2023 and into 2024.
You’ll learn what cloud cost optimisation and cloud cost management are, the best services for reducing your cloud costs, and how some of them can shrink your carbon footprint – as well as your monthly bill.
What is cloud cost optimisation?
Cloud cost optimisation (or cloud cost management) is the practice of reducing your overall cloud spend. The term is not at all misleading.
However, as cloud services have become more advanced, the ways we save have changed.
Historically, cloud cost optimisation and cloud cost management tools focussed on waste reduction and choosing the right payment plans.
These are still cornerstones of cloud cost management, but more recently, new architecture models like serverless or microservices have offered additional avenues for savings.
The problem for many companies and organisations remains that monthly cloud bills are dense and complicated, often requiring a dedicated resource or third party to demystify.
And this is only compounded by the methods of saving opened up by new architectures.
The solution, luckily, might just lie in one or more of the tools explained below.
The best cloud cost optimisation tools
1. Turn it Off
While we might be showing a little favouritism, Turn It Off does offer a refreshingly simple, carbon-negative option for those looking to pinch pennies while helping the planet.
With a mission to make reducing cloud waste as simple as turning off a light switch, the AI-powered platform learns your usage patterns and turns off non-production resources when you’re not using them.
While many of the tools in this list offer a greater variety of cost optimisation methods, there’s something to be said for a tool that has one job and does it well.
In a nutshell
Turn it Off switches off non-production environments when they’re not being used. This single-purpose tool focuses on cutting cloud costs while reducing carbon emissions.
How much can you save?
2. nOps
nOps deals exclusively with AWS, promising to both reduce cloud costs for overall usage and reduce usage by pausing idle resources. nOps works by automating many of the usual cost optimisation strategies using AI.
The nOps platform can handle reservation management, choosing the correct spot instances and turning off idle production resources.
nOps is tightly coupled with AWS, and as such has some service-specific offerings like the nOps Karpenter Solution for Amazon EKS.
In a nutshell
nOps is one of those cost optimisation tools using AI to automate a broad range of cloud cost management and optimisation strategies. It has a broad and deep offering within the AWS ecosystem.
3. Finout
Finout provides a deeper analytical capability than most native cloud cost management tools like AWS Cost Explorer or Azure Cost Management + Billing.
Within Finout, you can build highly customisable dashboards and set up alerts to trigger when you cross specified usage thresholds.
Finout works with all major cloud providers, meaning it’s well-suited to multi-cloud environments.
If you have a large, complex multi-cloud environment, combining AWS, Azure and platforms like Kubernetes, Finout is a great way to gain deep and meaningful visibility on your cloud costs.
In a nutshell
Ultimately, Finout is an analytics platform. It doesn’t automate cost savings like some other tools on this list. But it can provide deeper insights, which may be even more valuable in the right hands.
4. Apptio Cloudability
Apptio Cloudability is a tool that connects cloud spend and cloud spend management to various stakeholders. It provides forecasting, rightsizing and budgeting features, with a focus on providing value to finance and business teams.
Its forecasting and tracking features allow stakeholders to plan effectively around cloud spend, which can be a great benefit in organisations where this spending is something of a black box.
While the tool does provide clear, intelligent recommendations, it doesn’t focus so much on automation.
In a nutshell
Apptio Cloudability is a great tool for helping businesses manage cloud costs by making cloud and cloud spend management accessible to the wider business, as well as by giving good advice to engineering teams.
5. CAST AI
CAST AI is a comprehensive Kubernetes management solution driven by AI. It applies cost-saving measures in real-time, inspecting, hibernating, rebalancing and more.
CAST AI is compatible with more or less anything in the Kubernetes universe, working well with EKS, AKS, GKE and tools like OpenShift.
Although CAST AI is absolutely a cost optimisation tool, it could be considered a Kubernetes automation tool more broadly. For instance, CAST AI also automates security optimisations, which brings benefits outside of reducing cloud costs.
In a nutshell
CAST AI is a versatile Kubernetes automation platform with a focus on cost savings. If you’re running a Kubernetes workload, it’s your always-on AI helper.
6. Xosphere
Xosphere is a cloud cost management tool for taking maximum advantage of AWS Spot Instances. Spot Instances are unutilised EC2 instances that can be bought at a fraction of the price when idle.
Xosphere Instance Orchestrator uses AI to detect available Spot Instances and uses these instead of your On-Demand EC2s.
When the price goes back up, Instance Orchestrator reverts to the original instance – all without downtime.
In a nutshell
Another tool with a tight focus. Xosphere essentially ensures you’re always getting the better deal on your EC2 instances between On-Demand and Spot Instances.
7. ProsperOps
ProsperOps is another AWS-specific tool that automates cost savings around reservations and savings plans. Additionally, the platform focuses on a metric devised by the ProsperOps team, ESR, which stands for effective savings rate.
The idea is that with so many savings here, and costs there, it can be difficult to calculate your overall ROI. ESR is the cloud-based calculation of that overall return on investment.
In a nutshell
ProsperOps provides automation of the kinds of savings plan management that can be very time-consuming. Its focus on ROI, or ESR, is a great way of ensuring that you’re making the right decision in the final analysis.
8. AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost Explorer is the native tool for tracking, analysing and managing costs within AWS.
Cost Explorer fits more into the analytics category, offering its users visual dashboards to gain insight into their spending and usage.
Cost Explorer combines inputs from various AWS services such as AWS CloudTrail. Users can then identify problem areas and implement changes.
In a nutshell
Cost Explorer is the first-stop tool for AWS cost management analytics. It provides a more visual approach than you would find in basic reporting.
9. Azure Cost Management + Billing
Similar to AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management + Billing is a native cloud cost management tool. This includes many of the same basics, like cost analysis, visual reporting and recommendations.
However, Azure Cost Management + Billing can also work in conjunction with AWS.
Although it is native to Azure, the platform can connect with your AWS environment at the additional cost of 1% of managed spend.
In a nutshell
Azure Cost Management + Billing is Azure’s native analytics tool. However, it can also keep track of your AWS spending, providing many of the same basic features.
10. Harness
Harness is a CI/CD platform used by DevOps and development teams. It aims to automate and improve reporting, cost optimisation and cost governance. It uses automation to shut down idle resources, implement governance as code and simplify reporting.
Harness has a tighter focus than some of the tools on this list, eschewing practices like autoscaling for a richer DevOps offering.
In a nutshell
Hareness is an automated platform for cloud and DevOps, it delivers on reporting and governance as code.
11. CloudZero
Compared to some cloud cost management tools, CloudZero provides a more thorough breakdown of costs.
It helps attribute costs to teams, customers and product features. It also provides real-time cost monitoring on Kubernetes, Snowflake and other services. CloudZero works for every cloud provider, in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
In a nutshell
CloudZero provides visibility across your entire cloud environment. Unlike some analytics-focused cloud cost management tools, it works in many contexts.
12. Virtana
More an overall optimisation platform than a strict cloud cost management solution, Virtana nevertheless offers some great features for cutting down on cloud costs.
Virtana can help you rightsize, analyse cost vs. usage and even plan cloud migrations, though it leans more into recommendations than automation.
Virtna works with AWS and Azure environments as well as hybrid environments.
In a nutshell
An overall cloud management platform with solid applications in reducing cloud spend in a variety of contexts.
13. CloudKeeper
CloudKeeper is another tool for AWS. With multiple service-specific offerings, CloudKeeper can reduce cloud costs across your entire AWS environment using AI-powered automation.
CloudKeeper also offers an AWS analytics platform that users may choose to use over native tools.
In a nutshell
A powerful AI-driven offering with a host of tools to help users reduce their cloud costs on AWS.
14. Zesty
Another AWS-focused cost optimisation tool, Zesty is slightly narrower in focus than some competitors.
Leaning into EC2 instances and DevOps, Zesty is another AI-driven automation and prediction tool.
Its tight scope means it can really deliver on AWS EC2 cost optimisation. But it might not be the tool of choice for those looking for an all-in-one platform.
In a nutshell
A focused automation platform for getting the most from AWS EC2.
15. Economize
Economize is an analytics and recommendation-focused platform. It can be used to gain maximum visibility across your cloud environments and implement best practices.
Economize uses algorithms to analyse usage and to point out areas for optimisation.
It works for the major public cloud providers, AWS, Azure and GCP.
In a nutshell
Another analytics-based cloud cost management tool for public cloud spend.
16. Densify
Densify is an automated platform for optimising Kubernetes and cloud resources. Densify uses machine learning to continuously analyse and optimise your infrastructure and can be seamlessly integrated into your other workloads.
Densify claims to use one of the industry’s most sophisticated algorithms and works with hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
In a nutshell
Densify is a powerful ML tool for optimising cloud and Kubernetes environments with strong applications in cloud cost management.
Which of these cloud cost management tools is right for you?
As you can gather from reading this list, this question is moot until you know which gap you’re filling.
You’re probably already using a basic analytics solution, but if you have a heavy Kubernetes spend, CAST AI might be the missing piece of the puzzle.
If for whatever reason you don’t want to automate, an analytics tool that can give recommendations for best practices is the way to go.
And if you’re environmentally conscious and still looking to save on cloud costs, Turn it Off might just be the cloud cost management tool you’re looking for.
We hope that by reading this, you can find a way to save on your cloud spend and your carbon emissions.
What if you could flip a switch and save the planet?
Cutting costs and carbon for cloud-based applications
Turn it Off makes saving on cloud and carbon emissions as simple as flipping a light switch. Our AI-based platform learns your patterns and turns off non-production environments when you don’t need them.
We do one thing. And we do it well.
All you have to do is sign up.
