
Infracost Cloud
Cloud cost insights have enabled proactive right sizing and predictable infrastructure spend
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Infracost is checking the cost of adding any new resources using infrastructure as code, and this application runs some pipelines on GitHub and shows the cost of this particular operational action that we are going to do.
I can give you a quick specific example of a recent time I used Infracost in this way: we use Azure, and there are different infrastructures that need to be provisioned to keep our environment running smoothly. We do a lot of sizing and scaling of our infrastructure, and all of this is done through infrastructure as code, especially using Terraform or another IaC tool. Whenever we make a change, before we actually apply it, Infracost runs pipelines and lets us know what the added cost or removed cost of this particular operation is. If we're adding infrastructure or scaling up or scaling down a server, Infracost shows us the exact cost of this particular action. We usually scale up when we expect traffic to increase and scale down when the traffic decreases.
The primary use case from Infracost's side is understanding our provisioning cost and then looking at reducing the cost or optimizing it.
How has it helped my organization?
Infracost has positively impacted my organization by enabling us to reduce our cloud bill without impacting performance, achieving at least a 20% reduction in the amount we spend on cloud. It also helps us shift left by allowing us to understand the costs before we actually provision it.
I achieved that 20% cost reduction primarily by addressing overprovisioning, and also because Azure comes with different types of server types and app service types. The AI capabilities of Infracost help by recommending specific SKUs, which contributes to reducing costs.
What is most valuable?
The best features Infracost offers are the product itself and its easy integration in an infrastructure as code platform directly, especially with Terraform, and it understands Azure, since we are on Azure. It's easy to integrate, easy to understand, and easy to use out of the box.
The integration is easy to configure, and now it comes with some AI enablement that automatically tells us if something is overprovisioned or underprovisioned.
Regarding Infracost's AI capabilities, I think it comes with a lot of governance checks and is quite secure. I don't see a lot of issues here.
Infracost's AI capabilities are very well-trained and accurate. I have not seen any hallucinations or deviations.
What needs improvement?
Infracost is actually a very good product; however, the improvement part could be on the pricing side because the non-free plans are a bit expensive and don't necessarily offset the savings.
Feature-wise, I don't have a lot of complaints about this product; it's quite amazing with a good concept. I do think that with AI catching up, tools such as ChatGPT or Codex will be able to do what Infracost does, so they need to come up with something to differentiate their product.
I choose that assessment because of the pricing part; if the pricing was much better, since the starter pack is $250 a month, I'm not sure we are always able to save that much every month, making it an expense instead of a saving.
The only improvements needed for Infracost are on the pricing part.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Infracost for a couple of years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Infracost is very stable, extremely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Infracost's scalability is very good; it all depends on the price plan, as we can run it for various amounts such as 1,000 runs or 10,000 runs.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't had to interact with customer support yet.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution.
How was the initial setup?
The setup process was actually very easy for my team; there were no challenges or surprises. It's integrated on Azure, and we see the report on the GitHub Actions that we run. Whenever a pipeline runs on GitHub Action, it sends us the report for a server, showing how much additional cost, such as two dollars or five dollars, it adds to the monthly bill or reduces the monthly bill.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment; as I mentioned, we have achieved a 20% saving in our infrastructure costs. Our ability to scale up and down our infrastructure before making any changes means we know the pricing and predicted price very well, understanding how much it's adding to the cost. The only concern remains the starter price of $250 per month, which we aren't sure we can always save.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing needs a lot of improvement; otherwise, the setup cost, licensing, and everything else is very easy, very smooth, and very developer-friendly. They know their audience very well.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Infracost, I didn't evaluate other options; we just heard about it and decided to go with it.
What other advice do I have?
To others looking into using Infracost, I would say it is a really good product. Infracost's free plan comes with a sufficient number of runs, 1,000 runs, which is very generous. It has good integrations, so I recommend going ahead with it if you're looking to save on your cloud bill and shift left. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Cost visibility has guided our infrastructure planning and supports data driven cloud decisions
What is our primary use case?
I use Infracost in all my projects. A specific example of how I use Infracost in my projects is that I need to create infrastructure as code using Terraform and then I connect Infracost in the project to all people in the project and all stakeholders to know what the cost is for each resource in the environment.
Infracost is a simple application but very helpful because we can know what we can save in cost before implementation.
How has it helped my organization?
Infracost has positively impacted our organization because we can have more autonomy and we can pre-align with any person in the project. It provides more security and we can know what the costs will be.
When I say we have more autonomy and security, I mean that when we have some modules on Terraform, we can know what the cost of a resource or feature in the project will be, and then we can decide to decline or accept each resource type.
What is most valuable?
The best feature Infracost offers is that the dashboard is very helpful because it is more visual to all stakeholders.
I appreciate that I can configure a breakdown on pipelines after applying the form and all dashboards are very clear to know what the cost will be for each resource and how we can promote each environment.
What needs improvement?
I think Infracost can be improved by connecting native and cloud practices; we could use some tools according to each cloud, but as a service, Infracost is very helpful. However, in this case, we need to connect and then use it as a local tool or utilize some features, which I think have a ramp-up that is harder.
I think some parts of the free account can be more user-friendly. It is not so difficult or hard, but in some cases, it needs some time to connect.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Infracost for up to six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, Infracost is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Infracost's scalability is good; it is a simple application, and I am not facing any lack of performance or issues during usage.
How are customer service and support?
When I use Infracost, I am not facing any problems that require requesting customer support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used CloudFormation to know what the cost would be, and I switched to Infracost because CloudFormation has vendor lock-in on AWS. Infracost allows us to use it in multiple clouds.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment because with Infracost, we can know what the cost will be for each project, and then we can separate data for creation. We can use strategies such as creating low environments, and then after use, we can delete each resource during business hours to save money. It is very helpful.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I need to create each resource using the tools as I promote. In many cases, I use Terraform free locally and then Infracost locally in the free tier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Infracost, I did not evaluate other options; I am aware of other options such as Apptio, but I have been using Infracost many times.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Infracost overall an eight out of ten.
I chose eight out of ten because some tools are not very clear. As a best application, it gives us much flexibility, autonomy, and security because we know what the cost will be for each resource, but in some cases, it is not very clear. For instance, when comparing with CloudFormation on AWS, we have the specific value. In some cases, when we use Infracost to know what the cost will be, we need to separate a technical reserve.
Regarding Infracost's AI capabilities, I am not using much of its AI capabilities because it is only an on-premises application, a local application, but we can commit to a repository to know what the cost will be and share the application API key for stakeholders and other managers on the project. I do not have much experience in this area because it is recent.
In my opinion, Infracost's AI capabilities are more accurate because it has been on the market for a long time, and over time, Infracost will be improved because many more people are using it. However, I think the AI capabilities are much more useful in the paid part, not in the free.
I have used Infracost mostly in public cloud and private cloud, and the cloud provider I use most often with Infracost is AWS.
My advice to others looking into using Infracost is that it is a simple application, and we can use a very helpful free tier. However, I think the maintenance of the application could improve some features of the free tier, but I have not encountered any issues.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Shift-left cost insights have made teams question infrastructure changes in everyday reviews
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Infracost is tracking and analyzing the cost impact of infrastructure changes before they are actually provisioned. This manages the entire multi-cloud infrastructure that we are setting up with Terraform, and we integrate Infracost into our CI/CD. Every time a person opens a pull request, we can see the finance changes related to this pull request in terms of the infrastructure setup required.
I can give you a specific example of how this works in my workflow: there were cases when people submitted some EC2 instance change, such as increasing it when there was no real need, and just due to checking costs via Infracost and our CI/CD, we were able to identify that we do not actually need it.
What is most valuable?
The best features Infracost offers include shift-left visibility, so we see the impact before it actually happens, and we do not manually consult with cloud pricing each time, and we do not guess. We have precise information instead. It pulls the pricing difference and drops it in the code review interface.
Having that precise information in the code review interface makes us question the changes.
Infracost has positively impacted my organization by enhancing our engineering team's cost consciousness. We no longer treat the FinOps operations as something that we do at the end of the month. We do this regularly and this changes a lot for us, so this is super important.
What needs improvement?
I would appreciate some improvements in terms of processing speed, and I would be happy to see a slightly better user interface from my perspective, but everything else is excellent.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Infracost for around two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Infracost is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Infracost's scalability is great.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is great.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is straightforward and excellent.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment through money saved.
What other advice do I have?
The customer support is great.
My advice to others looking into using Infracost is to try it, as it is a really great technology. I would rate this review at eight out of ten.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Cost insights have guided infrastructure changes while the interface still needs refinement
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Infracost is checking the cost impact as my infrastructure would be increasing if I add a particular element. I use Terraform for managing my infrastructure, and whenever I make changes to that code structure, Infracost helps me understand what the increase in cost or impact on cost would be.
A specific example of when I used Infracost with Terraform to check the cost impact of a change was recently when I added a service hosted on EC2 servers along with load balancers and other AWS architecture. After adding it to my Terraform codebase, Infracost helped me identify the cost increase.
What is most valuable?
The best features Infracost offers include the fact that the increase in cost is directly provided by the tool, and I do not have to manually calculate what all costs would increase when adding a service or making a particular change to my Terraform code.
The way Infracost calculates and displays the cost impact helps me in my day-to-day work because, as a DevOps engineer, I work extensively with automations and building infrastructure through them. Infracost helps me identify and analyze the cost increase from adding particular infrastructure.
Infracost has positively impacted my organization by helping me reduce my infrastructure cost and review expenses, and I am able to remove all unnecessary infrastructure. I was able to save around $500.
What needs improvement?
Infracost could be improved in terms of processing and the user interface, as there are times that these aspects could be enhanced.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Infracost for a while now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Infracost is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Infracost's scalability is good; however, I have not explored much about it, so I cannot provide exact details.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is adequate.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, as I have saved money.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been great.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Infracost is that this is a great tool and it can help with pricing decisions about AWS infrastructure or any other infrastructure that can be managed by infrastructure as code. I would rate this product a seven out of ten.