Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

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Learn more about Kubecost

Amazon EKS provides an Amazon 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, Version 2, and Version 3. Each version is available in different tiers. You can use Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle for your Amazon EKS clusters at no additional cost. You may be charged for use of associated Amazon services, such as Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus. Also, you can use your existing Amazon 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 Amazon 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)?

Amazon 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 v3

What is the difference between Kubecost v2 and v3?

Kubecost 3.0 is a major architectural upgrade that delivers dramatically faster performance, enhanced scalability, and proactive optimization capabilities. The most significant change is the migration to a ClickHouse database, replacing DuckDB from version 2.8, which provides substantially faster queries and more reliable performance at scale. Kubecost 3.0 also introduces a unified agent that combines Kubecost and Cloudability functionality, eliminating the Prometheus dependency and reducing memory footprint while maintaining OpenCost compatibility.

Key architectural improvements in v3:

Amazon EKS optimized bundle benefits in v3:

The Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle continues to be available at no additional charge and is exempt from the new $100,000 USD spend limit introduced in Kubecost v3 free tier. EKS users retain full access to all Kubernetes spend functionality regardless of spend levels.

Core features comparison:

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 v2.0 announcement and the full 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 Amazon EKS optimized 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 Amazon 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 Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle at no additional charge. If you want additional Kubecost capabilities that aren’t included, you can buy an Enterprise License of Kubecost through the Amazon Marketplace, or from Kubecost directly.

Is support available for Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle?

Yes, only if you are using the Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle.

How do I get support for Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle?

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

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

No.

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

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

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

No. Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle only compatible with Amazon EKS clusters.

Can Kubecost track costs for Amazon EKS on Amazon 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. For Kubecost v3, the latest versions are available at the new Helm chart location public.ecr.aws/kubecost/kubecost. Previous versions (v1 and v2) remain available 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 Amazon 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 Amazon blog.

Does the new $100k spend limit in Kubecost v3 affect Amazon EKS users?

No. The $100,000 USD spend limit over 30 days introduced in Kubecost v3 free tier does not apply to Amazon EKS optimized Kubecost bundle users. EKS users retain full access to all Kubernetes spend functionality regardless of spend levels.

What are the main performance improvements in Kubecost v3?

Kubecost v3 introduces substantial performance improvements through its ClickHouse database backend, which provides dramatically faster queries compared to the DuckDB used in v2.8. Additionally, the unified agent architecture eliminates the Prometheus dependency, reducing memory footprint while maintaining full functionality and OpenCost compatibility.

Can I upgrade directly from Kubecost v1 to v3?

No. Direct upgrade from v1 to v3 is not supported. You must first upgrade to v2, then migrate to v3. Review the Kubecost documentation for detailed migration guidance, as the process requires careful planning and may impact report availability during transition.

Additional Kubecost Features