Answers to the most common questions about Infracost, the cloud cost avoidance platform that shows engineers the cost and FinOps policy impact of infrastructure changes before they’re deployed.
Last updated: October 2026
What is Infracost?
Infracost is a cloud cost avoidance platform that shows engineers the cost and FinOps policy impact of infrastructure changes before they're deployed. It reads Infrastructure as Code, including Terraform, CloudFormation, AWS CDK, Azure ARM templates, and Kubernetes manifests, estimates what a change will cost on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, and flags policy and tagging issues in the coding agent, the IDE, and the pull request, where they're cheapest to fix. For waste that's already running in AWS, Infracost Fix traces it back to the code and opens a pull request to fix it.
Is Infracost a cloud cost management tool?
Not in the traditional sense. Most cloud cost management tools, such as billing dashboards and cost explorers, report on spend after resources are already running. Infracost acts on the code that creates those resources, so waste is caught before it ships, and when waste does reach production in AWS, Infracost Fix fixes it at the source with a pull request. That's why Infracost describes itself as a cloud cost avoidance platform: the goal is to prevent waste, not to explain it on next month's bill.
What does Infracost actually do?
Infracost does three things. It estimates the monthly cost of an infrastructure change straight from code, using a database of more than 10 million cloud prices. It checks that change against more than 70 FinOps best practices from the AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Well-Architected Frameworks, plus your own tagging policies and cost guardrails. And it fixes what it finds, either inline while an engineer or coding agent is writing code, or, for waste already running in AWS, by opening pull requests that clean it up at the source.
What problem does Infracost solve?
Cloud spend is usually managed after the money is gone: a resource ships, the bill arrives weeks later, and someone has to trace the increase back to a change nobody flagged. Coding agents make this worse, because they generate Infrastructure as Code faster than humans can review it and they don't know your FinOps policies. Infracost moves cost and policy checks into the workflow where the change is made, so the cost of a change is known while it can still be changed.
Who is Infracost for?
Infracost is built for four groups: engineers and DevOps teams who write Infrastructure as Code, platform teams who enforce standards in CI/CD, FinOps practitioners who own tagging and cost reduction targets, and engineering leaders who need cloud spend to stay predictable while their teams ship faster.
Who uses Infracost, and what results do they see?
More than 3,500 companies use Infracost, including Estée Lauder, Vega, Safe Fleet, and Bourne Leisure, and Infracost customers have saved more than $3.5 billion. Estée Lauder runs FinOps for about 400 engineers with one dedicated FinOps person, and a single six-minute pull request fix flagged by Infracost saved $7,500 a year. Vega took 761 tagging gaps to zero in about ten minutes using Infracost with Claude. One enterprise customer now reaches 95% FinOps compliance before infrastructure ships.
What is shift-left FinOps?
Shift-left FinOps means moving cost and FinOps checks earlier in the engineering lifecycle, into the code, the IDE, and the pull request, instead of reviewing spend after it shows up on the cloud bill. It's the same idea as shift-left security applied to cloud cost. "Shift FinOps Left" is Infracost's core approach, and the whole product is built around catching cost issues before deployment.
Who makes Infracost?
Infracost is built by Infracost Inc., founded by Hassan Khajeh-Hosseini (CEO), Ali Khajeh-Hosseini (CPO), and Alistair Scott (CTO). The founders previously built a cloud cost tool that was acquired by RightScale, now part of Flexera. Infracost is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia and raised a $15 million Series A led by Pruven Capital in November 2025.
How does Infracost work?
Infracost parses your Infrastructure as Code locally to extract cost-related parameters, such as instance type, region, and disk size. It sends only those parameters, never your credentials, secrets, or full plan file, to the Infracost Cloud Pricing API to look up prices, including any custom price books you've set up. It then calculates the cost difference, evaluates FinOps and tagging policies, and reports the results in your coding agent, IDE, pull request, or the Infracost Cloud dashboard.
What are Infracost Dev, Infracost Check, and Infracost Fix?
Infracost Dev, Infracost Check, and Infracost Fix are the three parts of the Infracost platform, each built for a different team. Infracost Dev runs inside coding agents and IDEs, so engineers and agents write cost-aware infrastructure from the first line. Infracost Check enforces FinOps policies and cost guardrails in CI/CD at pull request time. Infracost Fix scans your running AWS estate for idle resources, tagging gaps, and cost anomalies, traces them back to code, and opens pull requests, Jira tickets, or GitHub issues to fix them. All three work from the policies you configure in Infracost Cloud.
Does Infracost need access to my live cloud accounts?
Not for cost estimates or policy checks. Infracost Dev and Infracost Check read only the Infrastructure as Code in your repository or pull request, with no access to your AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud accounts. Infracost Fix is the one exception: to find waste in resources that are already running, it uses a read-only IAM role in your AWS accounts, which you can revoke at any time.
How accurate are Infracost's cost estimates?
Infracost prices each resource using the public list prices that AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud publish, drawn from a database of more than 10 million prices across more than 1,100 resource types, so the cost difference on each change reflects real provider pricing. As with any estimate made before deployment, a few inputs come from you: usage-based costs such as data transfer use the usage values you set, negotiated discounts come from a custom price book in Infracost Cloud, and values only known at plan time come from a Terraform plan file.
Does Infracost account for negotiated cloud discounts?
Yes. Infracost Cloud supports custom price books, so estimates can reflect enterprise discount agreements such as the AWS Enterprise Discount Program, Azure Prepayment, and Google Cloud commitment agreements rather than list price. Infracost Enterprise adds SKU-level price overrides for more granular pricing.
How does Infracost handle usage-based costs like data transfer or Lambda requests?
Some cloud costs depend on usage rather than configuration, such as data transfer, storage requests, or function invocations. Infracost estimates these from usage values you define in an infracost-usage.yml file, or from organization-wide defaults set centrally in Infracost Cloud.
Can Infracost show costs in currencies other than USD?
Yes. Cloud providers publish prices in US dollars, and Infracost converts them at the current exchange rate to any ISO 4217 currency, such as EUR or GBP, using the INFRACOST_CLI_CURRENCY setting.
Which Infrastructure as Code tools and clouds does Infracost support?
Infracost supports Terraform (HCL and plan JSON), Terragrunt, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK (TypeScript, JavaScript, and Python), Azure ARM templates, and Kubernetes manifests, covering more than 1,100 resource types across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Terraform and Terragrunt work across all three clouds, while CloudFormation and CDK are AWS formats and ARM templates are an Azure format.
Does Infracost support Kubernetes?
Yes. Infracost estimates costs for Kubernetes manifests, including plain YAML, Helm charts, and Kustomize projects, with no cluster connection or runtime agent required. It prices Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs, persistent volume claims, and LoadBalancer Services, shows the cost of each change in the pull request, and applies your existing tagging policies to Kubernetes labels before workloads deploy.
Which source control and CI/CD platforms does Infracost work with?
Infracost connects directly to GitHub, GitLab, and Azure Repos, with support for GitHub Enterprise and GitLab Enterprise on the Infracost Enterprise plan. It also runs as a step in CI/CD systems including GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, Jenkins, Bitbucket Pipelines, and Atlantis, and it integrates with HCP Terraform through run tasks and with Spacelift. Platforms such as env0, Scalr, and Harness offer their own Infracost integrations.
Where do I see cost and policy issues? Do I have to check a separate dashboard?
No. Infracost shows cost estimates and policy issues where engineers already work: as a comment on the pull request, inline in the IDE, and inside coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor. Infracost Cloud adds an optional dashboard for platform and FinOps teams who want a central view across repos, including the Issue Explorer, guardrails, and reporting.
Can Infracost work with AI coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot?
Yes. Infracost Dev connects coding agents, including Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and GitLab Duo, to real-time pricing and your organization's FinOps and tagging policies at prompt time. The agent flags cost and compliance issues in infrastructure it's about to write, before a pull request exists. IDE extensions for VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains, Zed, Neovim, and others show the same information inline.
Why not just ask ChatGPT or Claude to estimate my Terraform costs?
You can, but a general-purpose model doesn't have reliable access to current cloud prices, your negotiated discounts, your tagging rules, or your cost guardrails, so it ends up guessing. Infracost Dev gives the agent deterministic inputs instead: the Infracost CLI fetches real prices and your policies, runs static analysis on the actual code, and checks each change, while the agent handles the conversation. In Infracost's benchmarks, Infracost Dev reduced token usage by 61% and improved accuracy by 55% compared with the same Claude setup without it.
How is Infracost different from Terraform Cloud (HCP Terraform) cost estimation?
HCP Terraform, formerly Terraform Cloud, includes basic cost estimation for Terraform runs, with roughly 200 resource types on its supported lists across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Infracost covers more than 1,100 resource types and goes further: it estimates usage-based costs, applies your negotiated discounts through custom price books, includes FinOps and tagging policies with no Sentinel or OPA code to write, and shows estimates in the IDE and coding agent before a plan ever runs. Infracost also integrates with HCP Terraform through run tasks, so teams can use both.
Does Infracost replace tools like Vantage, CloudZero, or Kubecost?
Infracost covers a different moment. Runtime cost tools such as Vantage, CloudZero, and Kubecost analyze spend after resources are running, which suits reporting, allocation, and showback. Infracost stops waste before it's deployed by putting cost and policy checks in the coding agent, the IDE, and the pull request, and in AWS, Infracost Fix traces waste that's already running back to the code and opens a pull request to fix it there. Many teams use a runtime tool for reporting and Infracost to prevent and fix waste at the source.
How is Infracost different from the AWS Pricing Calculator?
The AWS Pricing Calculator is built for one-off estimates that someone assembles by hand, and it covers AWS only. Infracost reads your Infrastructure as Code automatically on every change and shows the cost difference in the pull request, across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, with FinOps policy checks included.
Does Infracost replace my FinOps team's review process?
No. Infracost gives reviewers better information: cost estimates, policy violations, and suggested fixes. A human still reviews and merges every change, including pull requests opened by Infracost Fix. FinOps teams decide which findings are worth prioritizing, and the engineers who own the code decide what gets merged and deployed.
How do I get started with Infracost?
Sign up for a free account at dashboard.infracost.io, then either connect your GitHub, GitLab, or Azure Repos organization to get cost estimates in pull requests, or install the Infracost CLI and run infracost setup. The setup command gets you a free API key and walks you through installing your IDE extension, configuring your coding agent, and optionally adding Infracost to CI/CD.
Do I need to provide cloud credentials to get started?
No. Infracost estimates costs from code, not live infrastructure, so there's nothing to connect to your AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud accounts for cost estimates and policy checks. A cloud integration is only needed if you later add Infracost Fix to find waste in resources already running in AWS.
Do I need to change my CI/CD pipeline to use Infracost?
Not if you use source control integration. Infracost installs as an app on GitHub, GitLab, or Azure Repos and comments on pull requests without any pipeline changes. CI/CD integration is also available for teams that prefer to run the Infracost CLI as an explicit pipeline step.
What's the difference between source control integration and CI/CD integration?
Source control integration connects Infracost directly to GitHub, GitLab, or Azure Repos and requires no changes to your pipelines. CI/CD integration runs the Infracost CLI as a step inside your existing pipeline. Infracost recommends source control integration because it's simpler to set up and faster to run.
Can I get cost estimates before I open a pull request?
Yes. The Infracost CLI, IDE extensions, and Infracost Dev all run locally, so engineers and their coding agents see cost and policy issues on their own machines while they're still writing code, before anything is pushed.
Can we roll Infracost out gradually?
Yes. You choose which repositories to connect, so teams can start with one or two and expand. Each FinOps policy can be set to warn engineers or to block pull requests that fail it, so enforcement can start light and tighten as teams adjust. Infracost Fix agents run in Notify mode, where they surface findings but never act on their own: every pull request, ticket, or coding agent handoff needs a person to approve it.
My CI/CD environment restricts outbound network traffic. Can I allowlist Infracost?
Yes. Infracost publishes the static IP addresses and domains used by the Cloud Pricing API and Infracost Cloud, all on port 443, so you can add them to your firewall rules. See the allowlisting section of the docs for the current list.
Is Infracost SOC 2 certified?
Yes. Infracost is SOC 2 Type II certified. The Infracost Trust Center gives an overview of its security controls and lets you request details, and the Infracost team will complete your company's security questionnaire as part of an enterprise evaluation.
Does Infracost upload my source code?
Not when you run Infracost locally. The Infracost CLI, IDE extensions, and Infracost Dev parse Infrastructure as Code on your machine and send only cost-related parameters, such as resource type, instance size, and region, to the Cloud Pricing API. With the source control integration, checks run in an isolated, ephemeral environment that's created for each job and destroyed afterward, and what's sent back to Infracost Cloud is limited to metadata and results such as cost estimates and policy outcomes.
Does Infracost send my cloud credentials or secrets anywhere?
No. Infracost never requires or transmits cloud credentials or secrets for cost estimates. It parses Infrastructure as Code to extract cost-related parameters only. Where Infracost does hold integration credentials, such as for source control or Infracost Fix, they're encrypted in transit and at rest and never exposed to AI agents.
Does Infracost send my full Terraform plan to its servers?
No. The Infracost CLI parses your Terraform HCL or plan JSON locally to extract only cost-related parameters, such as instance type or region, and sends those to the Cloud Pricing API. It doesn't upload your full plan file, state file, or source code.
Does Infracost use my data to train AI models?
No. Infracost doesn't use customer source code, infrastructure definitions, cloud metadata, prompts, or generated outputs to train or fine-tune shared AI models. Customer data is logically separated by organization and never shared with other customers. For AI features that run through Amazon Bedrock, AWS and model providers don't use prompts or outputs to train their models either.
Which AI models does Infracost use?
Infracost Dev works with whichever coding agent you already use, such as Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, under your own account. Infracost Fix agents use Anthropic Claude models through Amazon Bedrock in Infracost's AWS account by default, and Infracost Enterprise customers can run them through Bedrock in their own AWS account with Bring Your Own AI.
Does Infracost make changes to my Terraform state or cloud resources?
No. Infracost never applies changes to your Terraform state or your deployed infrastructure. When Infracost Fix remediates an issue, it opens a pull request or a ticket, and that pull request goes through your normal review process, including code owners, CI checks, and branch protection rules. Nothing changes until someone on your team merges it.
Where is Infracost data stored?
Infracost Cloud data is hosted in the United States in AWS's us-east-2 region. Customer data is logically separated by organization, and standard contractual clauses cover international transfers. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Does Infracost sell my data?
No. Infracost doesn't sell personal data. It's a paid product backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia, not an ad or data business. See the Privacy Policy for what's collected and how it's used.
How do I report a security vulnerability?
Email security@infracost.io with a detailed description, one issue per email, rather than opening a public GitHub issue. The full process is in Infracost's security policy on GitHub.
How much does Infracost cost?
Infracost CI/CD is free and includes 1,000 runs per month. Starter is $250 per month for 10,000 runs and email support. Cloud is $1,000 per month, includes 10 admin seats with developer seats available for an additional fee, and adds FinOps policies, custom price books, Cost Guardrails, the Issue Explorer, Autofix workflows, dashboards, and audit trails. Enterprise pricing is custom and adds SSO/SAML, custom policies, SKU-level price overrides, and SLAs. See the pricing page for current details.
Is Infracost free?
Yes. The Infracost CI/CD plan is free and includes 1,000 runs per month across GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps, with community support in Slack. Infracost Dev, which brings cost estimates into coding agents and IDEs, works with a free Infracost account, and no credit card is required to sign up.
Is there a free trial of Infracost Cloud?
Yes. You can use Infracost Cloud fully featured for 14 days, and no credit card is required to sign up. After the trial you're prompted to purchase the seats you need. If you need more time, contact hello@infracost.io.
How does Infracost count seats?
Infracost counts seats by the number of distinct pull request authors who change Infrastructure as Code in a month, plus anyone who uses Infracost Cloud. The policy is lenient: if you go over your seat count in a month, everything keeps working, and if you consistently need more, seats can be added to your plan. The Infracost team can also provide a script that estimates your seat count from the last 30 days.
Can I buy Infracost through AWS Marketplace?
Yes. Infracost Cloud is available on AWS Marketplace. Contact hello@infracost.io and the team will make it available in your AWS accounts. Infracost also offers monthly and annual subscriptions.
Is there a money-back guarantee?
Yes. Infracost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans.
Do I need Infracost Cloud to use Infracost?
No. The free CI/CD plan provides cost estimates and pull request comments, and Infracost Dev works with a free account. Infracost Cloud adds FinOps and tagging policies, cost guardrails, custom price books, dashboards, team management, and remediation workflows.
What's the simplest way to understand Infracost?
Cloud cost tools tell you what you spent. Infracost tells you what a change will cost, and whether it breaks your FinOps rules, before you ship it.
See cost and policy issues in the coding agent, the IDE, and the pull request, before deployment. No cloud credentials required.