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On-Premise Clusters

K8Cost supports bare-metal and on-premise Kubernetes clusters (k3s, kubeadm, Rancher, OpenShift, Talos, etc.) with configurable cost rates.

Prerequisites​

  • A Kubernetes cluster running 1.24+ with RBAC enabled
  • Metrics Server deployed for usage-based recommendations
  • kubectl configured with access to the cluster

How Pricing Works​

On-premise clusters do not have cloud-provider pricing APIs. K8Cost uses default per-core and per-GB rates that you can customize to reflect your actual infrastructure costs (hardware amortization, power, cooling, colocation fees).

Default on-premise rates:

  • CPU: $0.031 per core-hour
  • Memory: $0.004 per GB-hour

These defaults approximate the blended cost of mid-range server hardware amortized over 3 years. Adjust them in the dashboard under Settings > Pricing to match your actual costs.

Configure the agent for on-premise:

kubectl set env cronjob/k8cost-analyzer -n k8cost \
  K8COST_PROVIDER=onpremise \
  K8COST_REGION=default

On-Premise Considerations​

  • Custom rates: Set accurate CPU and memory hourly rates in Settings to get meaningful cost estimates and savings recommendations.
  • No instance type mapping: Since bare-metal nodes do not have cloud instance types, K8Cost uses the node's reported capacity for cost calculation.
  • Storage: PVC costs are estimated using a default per-GB rate. Customize this if your storage backend has known pricing.
  • Mixed environments: If some clusters run on-premise and others on a cloud provider, K8Cost handles them independently. Each cluster uses its own provider and region configuration.

Self-Hosted Deployment​

For organizations that need to keep all data on their own infrastructure, K8Cost offers a self-hosted deployment option. The K8Cost API server runs as a container alongside PostgreSQL, and the CronJob agents report to your internal endpoint instead of k8cost.com.

Self-hosted deployments require a license key. Contact support@k8cost.io for pricing and setup assistance.

Next Steps​