As a cloud cost intelligence solution, we often get asked where we fit in the cloud cost universe — and whether or not we’re an alternative to CloudHealth. The short answer is: it depends.
The landscape of cloud cost tools is busy, with lots of different solutions that take different approaches to helping companies optimize their cloud costs.
To help answer this question, we thought we’d lay out the cloud cost landscape as we see it.
This blog isn’t intended to say any particular tool is better or worse. Instead, it’s about helping you identify a tool that best matches your use case — and maybe provide you with some other options if you’re only looking at alternatives to CloudHealth and similar bigger players.
VMware CloudHealth
Year Founded: 2012
Category: Traditional Cloud Cost Management
Best For: Enterprise companies with multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud needs.
Pricing Model (As of 2/2021 according to AWS Marketplace): Flat rate up to 100K monthly spend, then 3% of monthly spend.
CloudHealth is owned by VMware and has three core focus areas: “simplify cloud financial management, streamline operations, and strengthen security.” They might be right for you if you’re looking for traditional cloud cost management, such as right-sizing, reservation purchasing, and reporting — or if you need a solution that also has functionality beyond cost management, such as security and compliance.
What About Building Your Own Alternative To CloudHealth?
Considering a DIY approach to cloud cost management? You’re not alone.
High-profile cases like Netflix, Segment, and Lyft show it’s possible to develop tailored solutions that exceed the capabilities of off-the-shelf options. These custom tools can offer deeper insights into critical metrics, such as unit economics, and allow for the decentralization of cost data right down to the engineering level. .
However, diving into creating your custom tool comes with its own set of challenges. The investment isn’t just financial; it requires significant time and a dedicated team to build and maintain. So, before you start drafting plans for your in-house solution, here are three questions you can ask yourself before you start building your own.
Here are some of the best CloudHealth Alternatives to consider:
CloudZero
We’re CloudZero and we offer a new approach to controlling cloud cost — cloud cost intelligence. Built for software-driven companies, we put engineers in control of cloud cost by connecting technical decisions to business outcomes.
If growing your margins is an area of focus for you, we might be a great fit. Here’s where we excel:
- If you are looking to understand your cost of goods sold (COGS), we can give you a complete view of cost across your business, including AWS and Snowflake.
- If you want to build a culture of cost conscious engineering, we help you provide relevant views of product features, dev teams, and more — with context for teams to easily explore which costs are changing and why.
- If tagging, shared resources, or Kubernetes costs are a source of pain, we make it simple to map cost to your business — without tagging.
- If you are looking to measure unit cost, like cost per feature, cost per customer, and more — we can help you align cloud cost to your important business metrics.
Here’s what we’re not: If you’re only looking for a tool to right size instances and tell you which RIs to purchase — we’re not it (although we think AWS does a great job of offering those things for free).
We help you optimize your architecture — because the most disruptive companies have captured entire markets with innovative products with optimized architecture, (not by negotiating a better contract on their RIs).
Apptio Cloudability
Year Founded: 2011
Category: Traditional Cloud Cost Management
Best For: Companies with a centralized FinOps team looking for a tool for reporting on spend.
Pricing Model (as of 2/2021 according to AWS Marketplace): Tiered pricing, starting with $54,000 annually for up to $150K/month in cloud spend or up to $5,400,000 for $15M/mo in cloud spend.
Cloudability is owned by Apptio and describes themselves as a tool to “enable IT, finance, and DevOps teams to work together to optimize cloud resources for speed, cost, and quality.”
Like CloudHealth, they offer traditional cost management functionality, such as reserved instance management, cost reporting, and resource decommissioning. If you’re a CloudHealth customer and looking for an alternative without straying too far from their core functionality, Cloudability could be a good fit for you.
AWS Cost Explorer
Year Founded: 2014
Category: AWS Native Tools
Best For: Companies with relatively uncomplex spend.
Pricing Model: Free with AWS.
Cost Explorer is a free tool that AWS offers to all customers. If your requirements are relatively straightforward, and you don’t need visibility across complex, variable infrastructure, Cost Explorer might be enough for you. They also offer features like rightsizing, savings plans recommendations, and cost anomaly alerting
CloudCheckr
Year Founded: 2011
Category: Traditional Cloud Cost Management
Best For: Companies looking for more comprehensive compliance functionality, along with cost.
Pricing Model (as of 2/2021 according to AWS Marketplace): 3% cloud spend, plus additional cost for cost and compliance training.
CloudCheckr is known for pairing cost optimization with compliance management. According to Gartner, “The majority of its cost optimization functionality is basic and fails to provide the depth that organizations require to maximize savings while preserving performance. CloudCheckr’s breadth of features, even beyond cost optimization, seems to be traded with lower depth in the cost optimization space.”
CloudCheckr might be a fit for you if you’re looking for more compliance functionality, along with limited cost optimization.
ProsperOps
Year Founded: 2018
Category: Autonomous Savings Management
Best For: Companies looking for a new, modern approach to AWS savings plans and reserved instances.
Pricing Model (as of 2/2021 according to AWS Marketplace): $0.05 per dollar saved on compute and $0.35 per dollar saved on purchased/optimized convertible reserved instances.
ProsperOps is focused on Savings Plans and Reserved Instances (RIs) — using algorithms, advanced techniques, and continuous execution. If you’re looking for a modern, innovative approach to RIs and Savings Plans, ProsperOps is worth looking into. One of their benefits is that they only charge you for savings — not for a percentage of your spend like other tools.
Azure Cost Management
Year Founded: 2019
Category: Native Cloud Cost Management and Optimization
Best For: Companies using Azure looking for an integrated solution to monitor, allocate, and optimize cloud costs directly within their Azure environment.
Pricing Model: Free for Azure customers.
Azure Cost Management, a part of the Microsoft Azure platform, is designed to help companies manage and optimize their Azure spend. It provides tools to monitor, allocate, and control costs across Azure services and third-party Azure Marketplace services.
Its key features include cost analysis, budgeting, and cost allocation tools, which empower companies to track their spending patterns, identify inefficiencies, and implement cost-saving strategies. It also supports organizations with multiple cloud environments by offering Azure Cost Management for AWS, allowing you to manage AWS spend alongside Azure spend within the same tool.
Kubecost
Credit: Kubecost Cost Monitoring
Year Founded: 2019
Category: Kubernetes Cost Management and Optimization
Best For: Organizations using Kubernetes for container orchestration who seek detailed insights and optimization strategies for their Kubernetes spend.
Pricing Model: Kubecost offers plans from a free version with basic features to Business and Enterprise plans starting at $449/month for advanced features and support, with a 30-day free trial available.
Kubecost is designed to provide real-time cost visibility and insights for Kubernetes workloads, helping teams monitor, manage, and optimize their Kubernetes spending across multiple clusters and cloud providers.
By integrating directly with Kubernetes, Kubecost offers detailed cost analysis, savings recommendations, and budget alerts to ensure efficient resource allocation and spending.
Xosphere
Year Founded: 2017
Category: AWS Spot instances
Best For: Managing AWS Spot instances for 100% application reliability at a fraction of the cost.
Pricing Model: The pricing model is set at 10% of the EC2 On-Demand rate per managed instance per hour or $0.001 per unit.
Xosphere is an intelligent cloud orchestration company that empowers enterprises to reduce cloud expenses while enhancing reliability. It enables seamless movement of applications to the most cost-effective and efficient locations. The Xosphere Instance Orchestrator software turns unreliable Spot Instances into dependable resources, mirroring the reliability of On-Demand instances at a substantially reduced cost and achieving savings of up to 80%.
As a partner of CloudZero, Xosphere extends its capabilities, offering enterprises visibility into their cloud spending and making it easier for businesses to achieve the highest savings and operational efficiency.
CAST AI
Year Founded: 2019
Category: Kubernetes Automation
Best For: Halving cloud bills and boosting DevOps efficiency with AI and Kubernetes.
Pricing Model: Pricing starts at $200/month, with both free and subscription options, including a free trial.
CAST AI was born out of the founders’ frustration with escalating cloud bills following the sale of their previous startup, Zenedge, to Oracle. Witnessing firsthand the challenges associated with managing and optimizing cloud expenses, they embarked on a mission to create a solution that addresses this issue head-on.
It is a Kubernetes automation platform that significantly reduces cloud waste and expenses. By integrating with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, CAST AI provides a comprehensive, multi-cloud approach to cost optimization.
Unlocking Cloud Cost Efficiency With CloudZero
Choosing the right cloud cost management platform can impact your ability to optimize costs and drive efficiency within your cloud infrastructure. Among the various alternatives to CloudHealth, CloudZero takes the crown for its approach to cloud cost intelligence. CloudZero empowers engineers to directly link technical decisions with arising costs.
Whether you’re managing complex, variable infrastructures or seeking to nurture a culture of cost-conscious engineering, CloudZero offers a new perspective on cloud cost management. By placing the power of cloud cost intelligence in the hands of engineers, it enables companies to innovate faster, reduce costs, and improve margins.
Discover the difference CloudZero can make for your company by 
or taking a product tour today. Experience firsthand how CloudZero’s innovative approach can help you understand, control, and optimize your cloud costs.
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