What is OpenCost used for?

OpenCost is a CNCF project for monitoring Kubernetes and cloud costs, allocating spend by cluster, namespace, workload and pod and exporting metrics to Prometheus. It is a good fit for chargeback and showback for Kubernetes teams, FinOps reporting across clouds, and tracking GPU and LLM inference costs.

Is OpenCost open source?

Yes. OpenCost is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at opencost/opencost and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. OpenCost is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host OpenCost?

Yes. OpenCost can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to OpenCost?

Similar open-source tools in the Monitoring & Observability category include Cortex, Grafana Loki and VictoriaMetrics. SaaS products in the same category include Chronosphere, Amazon CloudWatch and Groundcover.

Is OpenCost actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to OpenCost was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.121.3, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 6.8k stars on GitHub.

OpenCost: open-source monitoring & observability

About OpenCost

OpenCost shows teams what they currently spend and have spent on Kubernetes and the cloud, and how resources are allocated. It brings cost transparency to Kubernetes environments shared by many applications, teams and departments, and extends to cloud costs across multiple providers. It was originally developed and open sourced by Kubecost and combines a specification with a Go implementation.

Features include real-time cost allocation by cluster, node, namespace, controller, service or pod, multi-cloud monitoring across AWS, Azure and GCP, dynamic pricing through the billing APIs of those clouds, support for on-prem clusters via custom CSV pricing, allocation of CPU, GPU, memory and persistent volumes, a Prometheus metrics endpoint, carbon cost estimates, MCP support, plugins for external costs such as Datadog, and AI inference cost tracking for vLLM-based deployments.

OpenCost is installed through its official Helm chart on Kubernetes 1.20 or newer, with the web UI in a separate repository. It is licensed under Apache-2.0 and written in Go. It suits FinOps and platform teams that need to show who is spending what on Kubernetes.

Key features

Cost allocation by namespace, workload and pod
Multi-cloud costs for AWS, Azure and GCP
On-prem pricing via custom CSV
CPU, GPU, memory and storage allocation
Prometheus metrics export
AI inference cost tracking
MCP support and plugins

Good fit for

→Chargeback and showback for Kubernetes teams
→FinOps reporting across clouds
→Tracking GPU and LLM inference costs

Built with: Go; Kubernetes
Tags: kubernetes; finops; cost-monitoring; cncf; cloud-costs; prometheus; cost-optimization; aws; golang

OpenCost: questions and answers

What is OpenCost used for?: OpenCost is a CNCF project for monitoring Kubernetes and cloud costs, allocating spend by cluster, namespace, workload and pod and exporting metrics to Prometheus. It is a good fit for chargeback and showback for Kubernetes teams, FinOps reporting across clouds, and tracking GPU and LLM inference costs.
Is OpenCost open source?: Yes. OpenCost is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at opencost/opencost and is written mainly in Go.
Is OpenCost free?: Yes. OpenCost is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host OpenCost?: Yes. OpenCost can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to OpenCost?: Similar open-source tools in the Monitoring & Observability category include Cortex, Grafana Loki and VictoriaMetrics. SaaS products in the same category include Chronosphere, Amazon CloudWatch and Groundcover.
Is OpenCost actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to OpenCost was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.121.3, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 6.8k stars on GitHub.