OpenCost is an open-source project for monitoring infrastructure cost that surfaces cost at the granularity of Kubernetes objects (pods, containers, clusters, etc.), covering various in-cluster resources (CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, network). It has integrations with multiple cloud provider APIs to obtain billing data and can be configured with pricing for on-premise Kubernetes clusters. OpenCost is the cost allocation engine originally built and still used by Kubecost, but it can also be used on its own. Cost allocation data from OpenCost can be exported into CSV files or to Prometheus for further analysis and visualization. Our teams are keenly watching the developments of tools like OpenCost and Kubecost that enable cost visibility for product and platform teams in organizations that have adopted Kubernetes. In these early stages, they find that OpenCost doesn't work well yet with certain workloads such as short-lived spot instances often used in data pipelines.
