Learn more about Kubecost

Amazon EKS provides an AWS optimized bundle of Kubecost for cluster cost visibility. Amazon EKS supports Kubecost, which you can use to monitor your costs broken down by Kubernetes resources including Pods, nodes, namespaces, and labels.

This topic covers the available versions of Kubecost, and the differences between the available tiers. EKS supports Kubecost Version 1 and Version 2. Each version is available in different tiers. You can use Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost custom bundle for your EKS clusters at no additional cost. You may be charged for use of associated AWS services, such as Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus. Also, you can use your existing AWS support agreements to obtain support.

As a Kubernetes platform administrator and finance leader, you can use Kubecost to visualize a breakdown of Amazon EKS charges, allocate costs, and charge back organizational units such as application teams. You can provide your internal teams and business units with transparent and accurate cost data based on their actual AWS bill. Moreover, you can also get customized recommendations for cost optimization based on their infrastructure environment and usage patterns within their clusters. For more information about Kubecost, see the Kubecost documentation.

What is the difference between the custom bundle of Kubecost and the free version of Kubecost (also known as OpenCost)?

AWS and Kubecost collaborated to offer a customized version of Kubecost. This version includes a subset of commercial features at no additional charge. See the tables below for features that are included with in the custom bundle of Kubecost.

Kubecost v2

What is the difference between Kubecost v1 and v2?

Kubecost 2.0 is a major upgrade from previous versions and includes major new features including a brand new API Backend. Note the Allocation and Assets APIs are fully backwards compatible. Please review the Kubecost documentation to ensure a smooth transition. For the full list of enhancements, please see the Kubecost release notes

Core features comparison:

New Features:

The following features have metric limits:

Metric limits:

Kubecost v1

Frequently asked questions

See the following common questions and answers about using Kubecost with Amazon EKS.

What is the Kubecost API retention (ETL) feature?

The Kubecost ETL feature aggregates and organizes metrics to surface cost visibility at various levels of granularity (such as namespace-level, pod-level, and deployment-level). For the custom Kubecost bundle, customers get data and insights from metrics for the last 15 days.

What is the alerts and recurring reports feature? What alerts and reports does it include?

Kubecost alerts allow teams to receive updates on real-time Kubernetes spend as well as cloud spend. Recurring reports enable teams to receive customized views of historical Kubernetes and cloud spend. Both are configurable using the Kubecost UI or Helm values. They support email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

What do saved reports include?

Kubecost saved reports are predefined views of cost and efficiency metrics. They include cost by cluster, namespace, label, and more.

What is cloud billing integration?

Integration with AWS billing APIs allows Kubecost to display out-of-cluster costs (such as Amazon S3). Additionally, it allows Kubecost to reconcile Kubecost’s in-cluster predictions with actual billing data to account for spot usage, savings plans, and enterprise discounts.

What do savings recommendations include?

Kubecost provides insights and automation to help users optimize their Kubernetes infrastructure and spend.

Is there a charge for this functionality?

No. You can use this version of Kubecost at no additional charge. If you want additional Kubecost capabilities that aren’t included in this bundle, you can buy an enterprise license of Kubecost through the AWS Marketplace, or from Kubecost directly.

Is support available?

Yes. You can open a support case with the AWS Support team at Contact AWS.

Do I need a license to use Kubecost features provided by the Amazon EKS integration?

No.

Can I integrate Kubecost with AWS Cost and Usage Report for more accurate reporting?

Yes. You can configure Kubecost to ingest data from AWS Cost and Usage Report to get accurate cost visibility, including discounts, Spot pricing, reserved instance pricing, and others. For more information, see AWS Cloud Billing Integration in the Kubecost documentation.

Does this version support cost management of self-managed Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EC2?

No. This version is only compatible with Amazon EKS clusters.

Can Kubecost track costs for Amazon EKS on AWS Fargate?

Kubecost provides best effort to show cluster cost visibility for Amazon EKS on Fargate, but with lower accuracy than with Amazon EKS on Amazon EC2. This is primarily due to the difference in how you’re billed for your usage. With Amazon EKS on Fargate, you’re billed for consumed resources. With Amazon EKS on Amazon EC2 nodes, you’re billed for provisioned resources. Kubecost calculates the cost of an Amazon EC2 node based on the node specification, which includes CPU, RAM, and ephemeral storage. With Fargate, costs are calculated based on the requested resources for the Fargate Pods.

How can I get updates and new versions of Kubecost?

You can upgrade your Kubecost version using standard Helm upgrade procedures. The latest versions are in the Amazon ECR Public Gallery.

Is the *kubectl-cost CLI supported? How do I install it?*

Yes. Kubectl-cost is an open source tool by Kubecost (Apache 2.0 License) that provides CLI access to Kubernetes cost allocation metrics. To install kubectl-cost, see Installation on GitHub.

Is the Kubecost user interface supported? How do I access it?

Kubecost provides a web dashboard that you can access through kubectl port forwarding, an ingress, or a load balancer. You can also use the AWS Load Balancer Controller to expose Kubecost and use Amazon Cognito for authentication, authorization, and user management. For more information, see How to use Application Load Balancer and Amazon Cognito to authenticate users for your Kubernetes web apps on the AWS blog.

Is Amazon EKS Anywhere supported?

No.

Additional Kubecost Features