Kubecost, a solution for monitoring, managing, and optimizing Kubernetes spend at scale, has announced the launch of OpenCost, a new open source project that has been submitted for acceptance to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). OpenCost provides Kubernetes cost monitoring and optimization as well as standardized methodologies for tracking Kubernetes costs.

OpenCost empowers developer, engineering, DevOps, and FinOps teams with actionable and accurate Kubernetes cost data and the capabilities required to significantly and continuously reduce Kubernetes-related cloud costs without impacting application performance. Teams can install OpenCost in minutes and get real-time data immediately. The tool runs inside Kubernetes clusters, and no data is sent out of a cluster without user permission.

OpenCost will provide guidance across various in-cluster resource types—including compute, storage, network, and load balancers—and will address this problem by providing standard cost models, best practices, and guidance.

The launch is supported by an open source community with participation from cloud-industry leaders including AWS, Armory, D2iQ, Google, Adobe, SUSE, Mindcurv, and New Relic. Kubecost aims to ensure that OpenCost is not owned by any single commercial entity—and that the project continues to evolve and thrive within the broader Kubernetes community.

The community of cloud industry leaders collaborating on OpenCost are developing industry standards and documentation that standardize methodologies and best practices for tracking Kubernetes costs. Founding companies of the OpenCost community are all heavy adopters of Kubernetes and have experience operating Kubernetes at scale.