Infracost is a cloud cost management tool designed to integrate seamlessly into engineering workflows, providing real-time cost estimates for infrastructure as code changes before deployment. By embedding cost visibility directly into the development process, Infracost enables teams to proactively manage cloud expenses, enforce FinOps best practices, and prevent budget overruns.
Key Features and Functionality:
- Real-Time Cost Estimation: Infracost analyzes Terraform configurations and offers immediate cost estimates, allowing developers to understand the financial impact of their code changes before deployment.
- CI/CD Integration: The tool integrates directly into continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines, automatically generating cost breakdowns and diffs within pull requests on platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Azure Repos.
- FinOps Policy Enforcement: Infracost checks code changes against best practices and organizational policies, ensuring compliance with tagging standards and recommending cost-effective resource configurations, such as transitioning from GP2 to GP3 volumes.
- Budget Guardrails: The platform monitors cost impacts against predefined budgets, triggering approval workflows if proposed changes exceed financial thresholds, thereby preventing unexpected expenses.
- Comprehensive Reporting: Infracost provides detailed reports on all infrastructure changes and their cost implications, offering visibility into both deployed and upcoming modifications.
- Enterprise Pricing Support: The tool accommodates custom price books, including support for Enterprise Discount Programs and Enterprise Agreements , ensuring accurate cost estimations tailored to specific organizational agreements.
Primary Value and Problem Solved:
Infracost addresses the challenge of unforeseen cloud expenses by shifting cost awareness to the early stages of the development lifecycle. By providing immediate cost insights and enforcing financial policies within existing engineering workflows, it empowers teams to make informed decisions, optimize resource usage, and maintain budget control. This proactive approach fosters a cost-conscious engineering culture, reducing the risk of budget overruns and enhancing overall financial governance in cloud infrastructure management.