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What is K8Cost?

K8Cost is a Kubernetes cost optimization platform built for DevOps engineers, platform teams, and FinOps practitioners who are tired of guessing where their cloud budget goes.

The Problem​

Kubernetes makes it easy to deploy workloads -- and just as easy to waste money doing it. Developers request 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory for a service that uses 200m and 512 MB in production. Staging environments run around the clock. PVCs are provisioned and never deleted. HPAs are configured with minimum replicas that never scale down.

The result: most organizations overspend on Kubernetes infrastructure by 30-60%, and nobody has the time or visibility to fix it.

The Solution​

K8Cost connects to your clusters via a lightweight agent, collects resource usage data, and evaluates it against a curated set of 65+ optimization rules. Each rule targets a specific type of waste -- over-provisioned CPU, idle workloads, unused storage, misconfigured autoscalers -- and produces a concrete recommendation with estimated dollar savings.

Unlike generic monitoring tools, K8Cost is purpose-built for cost optimization. It understands cloud-provider pricing for AWS, GCP, and Azure, so the savings estimates reflect your actual rates, not generic benchmarks.

Who Is K8Cost For?​

  • DevOps / SRE teams who manage Kubernetes clusters and want to right-size workloads without risking stability
  • Platform engineering teams building internal developer platforms who need cost guardrails and chargeback reporting
  • FinOps practitioners who need cost visibility, budget tracking, and executive-ready reports across multiple clusters
  • Engineering managers who want to understand which teams and services drive infrastructure costs

What Makes K8Cost Different​

Every feature on every plan. Most competitors lock advanced features behind expensive tiers. K8Cost gives you the full platform on the free plan -- dashboards, recommendations, GitOps export, anomaly detection, chargeback, budgets, reports, and more. You only upgrade when you need more clusters or nodes.

Rules-based, not black-box. The optimization engine uses transparent YAML rules that you can inspect, customize, and extend. Every recommendation links back to the rule that generated it, with clear thresholds and remediation guidance.

GitOps-native output. Recommendations are not just suggestions -- they generate production-ready patches in five formats (YAML, Helm, Kustomize, JSON Patch, Strategic Merge) that you can commit directly to your GitOps repository or apply via PR integrations with GitHub and GitLab.

Self-hosted option. For organizations that need to keep data on-premise, K8Cost offers a self-hosted deployment with a license key. Same platform, your infrastructure.

Next Steps​

Ready to try it? Sign up for free and follow the Quick Start guide to connect your first cluster in under 5 minutes.