12 Top Cloud Cost management Tools to Save Your Cloud Budget

Scaling businesses need to be prudent with costs—from early-stage startups watching every dollar to enterprise organizations managing millions in infrastructure expenditure. Cloud costs often represent the most visible opportunity for meaningful savings. With up to 32% of cloud budgets at risk of wastage, effective cloud cost optimization is essential for businesses navigating the complexities of cloud-native technologies like microservices, containers, and Kubernetes. However, without proper tools, gaining visibility into resource usage and associated costs becomes daunting. Traditional methods to manage cloud costs—manual spreadsheet tracking, periodic billing reviews, and siloed department-level monitoring—often result in obscured cost data buried within dense billing statements, compounded by the limitations of many existing management tools.

This opacity leads to inefficiencies, as businesses struggle to identify the specific drivers behind their cloud expenditures. Unoptimized resources frequently lurk in oversized compute instances, idle virtual machines, underutilized storage buckets, provisioned but unused load balancers, and databases with excessive capacity that continue to accrue charges without delivering proportional value. This guide addresses these challenges by exploring cloud cost management principles, highlighting their advantages, key criteria for choosing the right cloud cost management tools, and a selection of tools to choose from.

What is cloud cost management?

Cloud cost management is a business practice centered on overseeing, analyzing, and optimizing an organization’s expenditures on cloud computing resources. It offers increased visibility into resource utilization, enabling the identification and elimination of redundant or overprovisioned services. Additionally, it facilitates the prediction of future cloud costs, helping your team develop precise budget forecasts.

Cloud cost management software tools play a critical role in this process by tracking and categorizing all cloud-related expenses, and attributing them to respective teams accountable for their consumption. This ensures accountability and incentivizes prudent resource usage while discouraging wasteful practices.

Here are common examples of unoptimized cloud resources that drive up costs:

• Oversized virtual machines running at low CPU utilization

• Zombie instances left running after development projects end

• Unused storage volumes attached to terminated instances

• Idle load balancers directing traffic to deprecated services

By implementing effective cloud cost management strategies and utilizing appropriate tools, organizations can achieve greater cloud ROI and strategic alignment with their business OKRs.

Advantages of using cloud cost management tools

Modern cloud cost management platforms have a slew of features like AI-driven anomaly detection and automated resource tagging to provide granular visibility across multi-cloud deployments. These solutions integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines to enable real-time cost attribution to specific microservices, containers, and infrastructure components. Here are a few advantages of cloud cost management tools:

1. Predicts unexpected surges in spending

Cloud cost management tools facilitate precise forecasting of cloud computing requirements, preempting unforeseen increases in expenses that might disrupt free cash flow. Additionally, they empower organizations to capitalize on cost-saving opportunities, such as early bird discounts offered through reserved instances and savings plans.

2. Fosters strategic budgeting

Cloud cost management tools empower IT teams to monitor cost data and understand usage patterns. Armed with these insights, teams can strategically shape their approach to cloud management, product development, and pricing strategies.

3. Drives innovation with cost optimization

Using cloud cost management tools enables IT teams to efficiently optimize cloud expenditures, releasing resources for innovation. This means you and your team can free up funds for product roadmap prioritization or marketing ideas. When teams can clearly demonstrate the value derived from cloud investments, they cut through approval red tape for new resources, helping the organization move faster toward its goals.

4. Scales cloud infrastructure for future needs

Cloud cost management tools streamline and improve your cloud architecture, facilitating future expansion and adaptation. A well-optimized cloud infrastructure establishes a robust foundation for growth and scalability. With proper cloud cost visibility, you can confidently plan your scaling strategy knowing exactly what resources you’ll need and how much they’ll cost as your user base grows.

5. Boosts visibility and security

Cost management tools offer visibility into utilized cloud resources and services, helping security teams in the detection and monitoring of potential risks. These platforms can flag unusual access patterns or unrecognized resources that might indicate security breaches before they escalate. Security teams can also leverage the detailed inventory tracking to ensure compliance controls are properly implemented across all cloud assets, eliminating dangerous blind spots in your infrastructure.

Key criteria to look for when choosing a cloud cost management tool

When choosing a cost management tool, prioritize features that help with cost analysis and improve decision-making. Here are criteria to consider:

• Data collection: Opt for a cloud cost management solution that integrates with your cloud providers through APIs, enabling comprehensive data gathering on resource usage, billing, and expenditure across virtual machines, databases, storage, networking, and other cloud services.

• Data aggregation and consolidation: Seek out a tool that centralizes data from multiple cloud accounts, regions, and services to provide a unified view of costs and spending, facilitating better oversight and control.

• Cost allocation: Check for detailed breakdowns by department, project, and team, ensuring accurate attribution of expenses.

• Historical data analysis: Look for the ability to analyze historical data alongside real-time statistics to identify trends and patterns, enabling proactive cloud capacity planning and optimization of resources.

• Data visualizations: A solid platform will have intuitive visual representations, including graphs, charts, and dashboards, offering clear insights into cost trends and areas for improvement, building understanding and facilitating communication, particularly with executive stakeholders.

• Spending comparison: Evaluate the ability to compare expected versus actual spending to assess budget accuracy and set informed spending limits.

• Custom report generation: Examine whether you can generate and export custom reports detailing specific cloud metrics.

12 top cloud cost management tools

Several powerful cloud cost management platforms are on the market to help organizations make sense of their infrastructure spending. These range from comprehensive third-party solutions offering multi-cloud management to native tools built directly into AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud that provide more insights for their specific environments.

1. Vantage

Vantage delivers comprehensive cloud cost observability across multiple providers including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and specialized services like Kubernetes and MongoDB. The platform enables teams to create detailed reports that filter and group costs by multiple dimensions, with or without tags, giving you unprecedented visibility into your cloud spending. With Vantage’s budget alerts, you’ll receive notifications when costs are trending over thresholds you define, allowing for proactive management before expenses spiral. The Autopilot feature can automatically purchase AWS Compute Savings Plans, reducing costs.

Key features include:

• Single pane of glass reporting. View all cloud costs across providers in one unified interface.

• Kubernetes efficiency metrics. Identify pod waste and optimize clusters with detailed resource utilization insights.

• Network flow analysis. Correlate data transfer costs with specific resources and understand traffic patterns.

• Virtual tagging. Create custom cost allocation tags for comprehensive management without modifying infrastructure.

• Commitment management. Model and purchase savings plans with confidence through the Savings Planner.

2. Harness

Harness, a CI/CD platform, is a tool for managing cloud costs by prioritizing cost transparency, optimization, and governance. The platform provides detailed cost perspectives for attribution across teams and workloads, detects idle resources, offers multi-cloud management across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes, implements hierarchical budgeting with forecasting, and utilizes governance-as-code to enforce compliance policies… Harness offers workload optimization suggestions for cost savings and automates the shutdown of idle cloud resources

Key features:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Provisions and manages cloud infrastructure using code, enabling consistent and repeatable deployments.

• Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Automates the software delivery pipeline, reducing manual effort and accelerating time to market.

• Cost optimization features: Identifies and eliminates idle resources, automates scaling based on demand, and provides cost allocation reports.

• Multi-cloud support: Supports deployments on various cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure.

• Cloud spend visibility: Provides real-time insights into cloud spending and helps identify cost-saving opportunities.

3. Flexera one

The Flexera One cloud management suite addresses various cloud management tasks, including asset tracking and governance organization for streamlined control. Notably, it includes a robust budget control feature, offering multi-cloud accounting for detailed spending tracking across teams and projects. Flexera One provides optimization suggestions to mitigate wasteful allocations and implements automated systems accordingly. Leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, it analyzes consumption patterns across multiple clouds to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Key features:

• Unified view of cloud costs: Aggregates cost data from multiple cloud providers into a single dashboard for easy tracking and analysis.

• Granular cost allocation: Allocates costs to specific departments, projects, or workloads for chargeback and cost optimization.

• Cloud security and compliance: Provides tools to identify and mitigate security risks and ensure compliance with regulations.

• Cost optimization recommendations: Offers actionable recommendations to reduce cloud spending based on historical data and usage trends.

4. CloudHealth by Vmware

CloudHealth by VMware offers users a unified interface for managing cloud costs, usage, performance, and security. Following its acquisition by VMware, the CloudHealth Partner Program empowers VMware partners to optimize cloud costs and boost efficiency. Notable features include a comprehensive toolkit for managing, analyzing, and optimizing cloud infrastructure and spending, along with its multi-cloud capabilities. However, some users note its reporting capabilities lack customization and granularity.

Key features:

• Multi-cloud cost management: Manages costs across various cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud.

• Automated cost optimization: Identifies and eliminates idle resources, recommends cost-saving actions, and automates cost optimization tasks.

• Resource optimization: Recommends optimal resource configurations to reduce cloud spending without impacting performance.

5. Denisfy

Densify specializes in automating the identification and monitoring of cloud resource usage and spending, helping users achieve the optimal balance between performance and cost. Leveraging a blend of machine learning and deep analytics, Densify analyzes workload patterns to determine the most efficient setup and configuration. This systematic approach mitigates application performance issues, boosts utilization, and reduces costs by preventing overallocation. Integrating with deployment pipelines, the platform automates instance type selection and scaling parameters for cloud infrastructure, minimizing errors and ensuring continuous alignment with application requirements.

Key features:

• Automated rightsizing: Uses AI and machine learning to automatically identify and rightsize underutilized cloud resources, optimizing costs without sacrificing performance.

• Granular cost visibility: Provides detailed cost breakdowns by resource, department, project, and tag, enabling precise cost tracking and allocation.

• Reserved instance management: Simplifies the management of reserved instances, helping you identify opportunities for savings and ensure optimal utilization.

• Cloud agnostic: Supports multi-cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud, providing a unified view of your cloud costs.

• Customizable reporting: Offers customizable dashboards and reports, allowing you to tailor cost insights to your specific needs.

6. Morpheus cloud cost optimization

Morpheus Cloud Cost Optimization is an analytical tool tailored to help FinOps teams efficiently manage hybrid cloud expenses. By integrating with hypervisors or cloud platforms, it enables advanced automation, logging, and precise analytics. This ensures reliable monitoring of cloud expenditure and usage patterns, with the platform synchronizing with public cloud pricing daily, considering different currencies and pricing adjustments. Morpheus’ analytics engine also facilitates thorough comparisons of utilization and costs across multiple clouds. Additionally, the provides detailed cost comparisons and analytics, simplifies budget management, and integrates with third-party tools for cloud cost analysis and allocation.

Key features:

• Resource optimization: Identifies and recommends opportunities to optimize resource utilization, including rightsizing, scheduling, and auto-scaling.

• Budgeting and forecasting: Helps you set budgets and forecasts cloud costs, allowing you to proactively manage spending and avoid surprises.

• Integration with third-party tools: Integrates with existing IT management tools, streamlining your cloud cost management workflow.

7. Cloudzero

CloudZero’s platform delivers comprehensive analysis of your company’s cloud expenses, providing detailed insights into spending breakdowns. It fosters collaboration between engineering and finance teams by offering clarity on expenditures, enabling precise ROI assessments. It distinguishes between essential and wasteful spending, empowering swift corrective actions. With visibility across containerized and non-containerized environments, CloudZero consolidates spending information for easy access. Additionally, its SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance guarantee data accuracy and security. CloudZero is a dependable solution for tracking costs across teams, projects, and features, providing stakeholders with real-time financial updates and alerts on potential budget overruns.

Key features:

• Cost anomaly detection: Uses AI to detect unusual spikes in cloud spending, helping you identify potential areas of waste or fraud.

• Reserved instance optimization: Helps you optimize your reserved instance purchases.

• FinOps integration: Integrates with FinOps tools and processes to align your cloud costs with your business objectives.

• Multi-cloud support: Supports AWS, Azure, and GCP, providing a unified view of your cloud costs across different platforms.

• Customizable dashboards: Offers customizable dashboards and reports to track and analyze your cloud costs in the way that matters most to you.

8. DigitalOcean Monitoring and cloud cost management tools

DigitalOcean Monitoring gives you a clear view of how your servers are performing without requiring complex setup or configuration. The service sends real-time alerts when any metric crosses thresholds you specify, instantly notifying you through Slack or email so you can address issues before they affect your users. With intuitive dashboards displaying up-to-the-minute visualizations, you’ll know exactly when to scale your resources to improve application performance.

Unlike other providers, we don’t offer specialized cost monitoring tools or alerting—our pricing structure is intentionally straightforward with no hidden fees or complex tiers. Our transparent billing model means resources are consistently priced, minimizing the need for dedicated cost management solutions. Our pricing calculator helps you understand costs upfront, making it easier to plan your infrastructure spending and avoid budget surprises.

Key features:

• CPU utilization. See percentage of processing power in use across all Droplets.

• Memory performance. View RAM usage patterns to identify potential bottlenecks.

• Disk metrics. Monitor both storage capacity and read/write operations in real-time.

• Bandwidth consumption. Track public network traffic in megabits per second.

• Group alerting. Set notifications for individual Droplets or clusters of resources.

9. AWS Cloud financial management tools

AWS cloud financial management tools offer a suite of resources to organize and monitor cost and usage. With features like consolidated billing and access permissions, budgeting, forecasting, and pricing optimizations, users can gain added control and can drive cost reduction initiatives. With tools like AWS Cloud Value framework, Pricing Calculator, budgets, and Billing conductor, organizations can optimize their AWS expenditure effectively, sidestepping AWS hidden costs and AWS bill shock.

AWS Cost Explorer

• Granular cost analysis: Dive deep into cost data across services, regions, accounts, and tags for detailed insights.

• Cost trends and forecasts: Gain historical cost trends and projected future costs based on usage patterns.

• Customizable reports and dashboards: Tailor your view with custom filters, group by dimensions, and export reports.

AWS Budgets

• Set and track budgets: Define budgets for specific periods, services, or accounts to prevent overspending.

• Receive alerts and notifications: Stay informed about budget breaches with customizable email, SNS, and CloudWatch alarms.

• Identify cost drivers: Analyze budget reports to understand which services or resources are driving costs.

AWS Cost Allocation Tags

• Allocate costs to departments or projects: Assign tags to resources to track costs by specific teams or projects.

• Enable cost chargeback: Facilitate internal cost allocation for transparency and accountability.

• Filter and group by tags: Easily analyze and report on costs associated with specific tags.

AWS Reserved Instances

• Purchase reserved instances: Upfront commitment for specific resources at discounted rates.

• Optimize reserved instance utilization: Monitor usage and identify opportunities to switch to more suitable reservations.

• Savings plans: Purchase flexible plans offering discounts on compute, memory, and storage resources.

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection

• Identify unusual spikes in costs: Utilize machine learning to detect potential fraud, waste, or misconfiguration.

• Receive notifications for anomalies: Be alerted when costs deviate significantly from expected patterns.

• Investigate and take action: Quickly identify the cause of anomalies and take corrective steps.

10. Azure cost management + billing

Azure Cost Management + Billing, part of Microsoft’s product suite, helps businesses to optimize their cloud investments by increasing visibility and accountability. Through the Azure portal, users can monitor and report on cloud usage and expenses, aided by Azure Advisor’s tailored cost optimization suggestions. Integration with Microsoft Power BI connectors and Cost Management APIs allows for personalized cost management approaches. Recently, AI functionalities have been integrated to provide deeper insights, forecasting, and reporting features. This helps to implement governance policies and promote cost-efficient practices, ultimately maximizing the return on cloud investments.

Key features:

• Cost analysis and insights: Drill down into cost data by resource, department, subscription, and other dimensions for granular understanding of your cloud spending.

• Budgeting and forecasting: Set budgets and receive alerts when approaching limits, along with cost forecasts based on usage patterns to proactively manage spending.

• Reserved instance and savings plan optimization: Identify opportunities to purchase reserved instances or savings plans for predictable costs and significant discounts on frequently used resources.

• Cost anomaly detection: Utilize AI to detect unusual spikes in spending that might indicate potential fraud, waste, or misconfiguration, allowing for quick investigation and corrective action.

• Integration with other Azure tools: Connect to other Azure services like Azure Advisor for personalized recommendations and Azure Resource Manager for managing resources.

11. Google cloud cost management

Google Cloud Platform offers a suite of approximately a dozen tools for effective cost management, accessible through the Cloud Console. Within the console, users can access two primary cost-related pages: Cloud Billing Reports and Cost Tables.

Cloud Billing Reports enable users to preview usage costs, facilitating the identification and analyzing resource consumption trends. Using charts, users can easily discern which products and locations contribute most to expenditure. Additionally, cost management can be structured according to organizational hierarchy, such as projects, folders, or labels.

Meanwhile, the Cost Table report provides a detailed, tabular breakdown for each invoice month, facilitating reconciliation of statements. Through dynamic filtering, sorting, and grouping, users gain insight into the cost of each invoice entry.

Key features:

• Cost recommendations: Google Cloud Cost Management provides recommendations for optimizing your cloud costs, based on your usage patterns and best practices.

• Budgeting and alerts: You can set budgets and receive alerts when your spending is at risk of exceeding your limits.

• Cost reports: Google Cloud Cost Management offers detailed cost reports that break down your spending by project, resource type, and other dimensions.

• Reserved instance management: You can easily manage your reserved instances and ensure you’re getting the most value out of them.

• Integration with other Google Cloud tools: Google Cloud Cost Management integrates with other Google Cloud tools, such as Cloud Billing and Cloud Monitoring.

12. IBM Turbonomic

Turbonomic is an AI-powered solution for effectively managing deployment, aligning application demand with infrastructure. The tool automatically initiates, halts, and relocates applications in response to demand, utilizing data stored in a warehouse to train AI for future decisions. The latest version introduces a new dashboard and reporting framework based on Grafana.

Turbonomic integrates with various software, tools, processes, and workflows, maximizing its capabilities. It offers full-stack visualization, providing a comprehensive view of entity interactions and impacts across all layers, facilitating cost-effective resourcing decisions. Additionally, intelligent analytics offer actionable insights, optimizing application performance through dynamic resourcing. The platform supports cloud migration planning, assisting businesses in devising tailored, cost-effective strategies to meet their specific cloud service requirements.

Key features:

• AI-driven optimization: Leverages machine learning to analyze resource utilization and automatically scale workloads to optimize cost and performance.

• Multi-cloud support: Manages costs across various cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises infrastructure.

• Continuous cost optimization: Continuously monitors and adjusts resource allocation to ensure you only pay for what you use.

• Compliance automation: Enforces cloud governance policies and automates compliance tasks to reduce security risks and costs.

Cloud cost management tools FAQ

What are cloud cost management tools?

Cloud cost management tools are specialized software platforms that help organizations monitor, analyze, and optimize their spending across cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. These solutions provide visibility into resource utilization, identify waste, automate cost optimization actions, and offer reporting capabilities that allow companies to attribute costs to specific teams, projects, or business units for more effective budget management and resource planning.

Why should businesses invest in cloud cost management tools?

Cloud cost management tools provide visibility into resource usage and spending patterns that would otherwise remain hidden in complex billing statements. They help organizations identify wasteful spending, optimize resource allocation, and implement governance policies that can reduce cloud expenditures.

What are the top cloud cost management platforms available today?

The market includes native tools developed by cloud providers—AWS Cloud Financial Management, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Cost Management—which offer dedicated integration with their specific platforms. Popular third-party solutions providing comprehensive multi-cloud support include Vantage, Harness, Flexera One, and CloudZero.

What features should I prioritize when selecting a cloud cost management tool?

Prioritize solutions offering granular visibility into all your cloud resources, customizable dashboards for different stakeholders, automated recommendations, budget alerts, and integration with your existing DevOps toolchain. For multi-cloud environments, ensure the platform supports all your providers and can provide unified reporting across your entire infrastructure.

Resources

• Flexera State of the Cloud Report

Leverage DigitalOcean to optimize your cloud costs

DigitalOcean provides a simple and scalable cloud infrastructure platform specifically engineered for the operational and budgetary requirements of small to medium businesses. With transparent pricing, built-in monitoring tools, and a user-friendly management interface, the platform eliminates hidden fees and complex pricing models while delivering the essential computing, storage, and networking services that growing companies need without the overhead of enterprise-focused cloud providers.

• Transparent pricing model: DigitalOcean has a straightforward pricing structure, charging a flat rate of $0.01 per GB for data transfer. This transparency improves budgeting efforts, providing businesses with a predictable cost landscape.

• Generous bandwidth allowances: Businesses can benefit from monthly outbound bandwidth allowances ranging from 500 GiB to 11,000 GiB, depending on the selected Droplet plan. Bandwidth is pooled between Droplets, accommodating businesses of varying sizes with diverse requirements.

• Competitive overage rates: In cases where data transfer needs exceed the allowances, DigitalOcean imposes a competitive flat rate of $0.01 per GiB for additional outbound data transfer over the public network.

• Mitigation of vendor lock-in: DigitalOcean addresses the challenge of high egress fees associated with vendor lock-in by offering low and predictable egress pricing. This facilitates seamless data transfer and provider switching without incurring exorbitant costs.

• Bandwidth pooling: Through the operation of multiple Droplets, DigitalOcean consolidates bandwidth allowances. Deploying more VMs increases the collective bandwidth cap, providing greater flexibility and potential cost savings.

• Free internal data transfer: Internal data transfers between DigitalOcean Droplets via a virtual private network do not impact bandwidth allowances or result in additional charges, benefiting businesses with substantial internal data traffic.

• Advanced offerings: DigitalOcean offers Premium CPU-Optimized virtual machines tailored for CPU-intensive applications, along with Managed Kubernetes, Managed Databases, and diverse storage options—all competitively priced.

• AI offerings: GPU Droplets for scaling AI/ML workloads, Bare Metal GPUs for dedicated high-performance tasks, the GenAI Platform for building and deploying AI agents, and 1-Click Models for rapid deployment of popular AI models with minimal setup.

• Support and resources: DigitalOcean provides SMB-friendly customer support, extensive documentation, and tutorials, simplifying navigation for users, particularly those new to cloud computing.

With DigitalOcean’s cloud offerings, businesses can manage and optimize their cloud costs while enjoying reliable services and support tailored to their needs.

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