AWS ranks #1 in Forecasting and Estimation Use Case in Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud Financial Management Tools report

A cloud vendor’s Cloud Financial Management (CFM) capabilities are crucial for your success in the cloud. Whether you’re planning future investments, optimizing current spending, or allocating costs across your organization, having the right CFM tools makes all the difference. AWS is proud to be recognized in the latest 2025 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud Financial Management Tools research.

What is this report and why is this important?

We observe that 2025 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud Financial Management Tools research includes Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) alongside specialized solution providers for the first time. For this evaluation, Gartner assessed 17 vendors against 11 critical capabilities: Architectural Design Support, Cost Allocation, Cost Reporting, Unit Economics, Budget and Incident Management, Workload Optimization, Commitment Management, Remediation Management, KPI Tracking, Cloud Reselling, and Cloud Provider Support. These capabilities scores are weighted to feed into the top 7 use cases identified by Gartner: Financial Risk Management, Forecasting and Estimation, Driving Cost-Efficiency, Promoting Accountability, Maximizing Business Value, Solution Provider, and Multicloud Management.

In our view, this analytical approach reflects an evolving market, where native CFM tools are becoming increasingly significant. We interpret this as validation that customers expect robust financial management capabilities directly from your cloud providers, and we’re committed to meeting these expectations.

AWS ranks #1 in Forecasting and Estimation Use Case

We understand that predicting cloud costs can be challenging – from selecting the right resources to considering existing usage patterns and discount terms. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of planning tools. AWS Pricing Calculator, AWS Migration Evaluator, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Cost and Usage Reports work together to help you plan and forecast with confidence.

Our “what-if” analysis lets you explore different scenarios before making decisions. You can:

• Model various architectural configurations and evaluate the financial impact of these configurations together with various pricing models or service combinations with AWS Pricing Calculator
• Evaluate your own commitment amount and estimate its impact on cost savings, coverage and utilization of Savings Plans with the Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer
• Fine-tune resource recommendations with AWS Compute Optimizer’s customizable preferences (e.g., headroom/threshold for CPU utilization, memory utilization, lookback period, and instance family preferences)

Figure 1. Vendors Product Scores for Forecasting and Estimation Use Case

AWS ranks #3 in Driving Cost Efficiency Use Case

AWS stands out in the cost optimization space, providing you with highest quality, broadest range, and most in-depth optimization recommendations. To drive the most cost savings for you, we’re focused on delivering:

• High-quality, actionable recommendations developed with service experts
• Broad coverage across AWS services and features, so you can always receive cost saving recommendations for different workloads you run on AWS
• Detailed cost saving estimates with risk assessment, required implementation effort, and rollback options in AWS Cost Optimization Hub, so you can make informed decisions about your cost optimization initiatives
• Custom cloud reselling and billing solutions, e.g., AWS Billing Conductor, designed to simplify and optimize financial operations for service providers

Figure 2. Vendors Product Scores for Driving Cost Efficiency Use Case

AWS ranks #3 in Promoting Accountability Use Case

Cost allocation is fundamental for attributing cost and understanding efficiency and profitability across various business entities. AWS provides a few ways for you to tag resources and apply business metadata to your AWS billing and usage data.

• Flexible resource tagging with robust compliance measures, enabling you to define and enforce tagging rules across organizations. In a Tag policy, you can specify tagging rules (value and case treatment) applicable to resources. You can identify untagged resources with AWS Cost Explorer, and create custom rules that evaluate whether resources have the required tags with AWS Config. You can also use AWS CloudWatch and EventBridge to automatically notify you when resources are deployed without compliant tags.
• Advanced tag normalization through AWS Cost Categories, maintaining consistency in reporting. The normalization process can be applied retroactively to existing resources and automatically to newly deployed resources. You can use AWS Resource Group Tagging API to programmatically implement tag normalization values and apply across environment.
• Detailed cost allocation for shared resources, including container and pod-level insights, making it easier to allocate shared infrastructure costs from Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), so you can trace these costs to specific departments and cost centers.
• Customizable pricing rules for chargeback process with AWS Billing Conductor, customizing rates and pricing rules so you can maintain consistency even when usage pattern changes when you allocate costs to your business entities.

Figure 3. Vendors Product Scores for Promoting Accountability Use Case

Looking ahead

While we’re honored by this recognition from Gartner, the whole AWS CFM teams (product, engineering, field) are committed to improving our CFM tooling to make it easier for you to gain actionable insights and make informed decisions about your cloud investments. We understand effective financial management tools is crucial to your success in the cloud, and we will continue to innovate on your behalf.

References:

Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Cloud Financial Management Tools, By Marco Meinardi, Ang Troy, Ken Rothenberger, Dennis Smith, 29 September 2025

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