FinOps tools: Native vs. third-party and how to choose

What Are FinOps Tools?

FinOps, or cloud financial management, is a framework for managing cloud costs and optimizing cloud spending. It relies on a combination of best practices, tools, and cultural shifts that enable organizations to understand their cloud costs, make informed collaborative decisions about their cloud usage, and optimize their spending to achieve better business outcomes.

FinOps tools are software applications that help organizations manage their cloud costs and optimize their cloud spending. These tools are designed to provide visibility into cloud usage, identify areas of inefficiency, and help teams make informed decisions about their cloud spending. Common FinOps tools include cost management dashboards, cloud cost optimization tools, and budgeting and forecasting tools.

In this article:

Cloud FinOps tools, features, and capabilities

The main features and capabilities of FinOps tools can vary depending on the specific tool and vendor, but some common features include:

  • Cost management dashboard: Provides a centralized view of cloud spending, enabling teams to track usage and identify areas of cost savings. Dashboards can also provide visualizations and reports to help teams analyze and understand their cloud costs.
  • Cost allocation and chargeback: Enables organizations to allocate cloud costs to specific teams, departments, or projects, helping to ensure that costs are distributed fairly and accurately. This functionality may also provide automated invoicing and billing features.
  • Cloud cost optimization: Helps organizations identify unused or underutilized resources, and provides recommendations for reducing cloud costs. This functionality can also provide automation features to optimize resource usage and reduce waste.
  • Budgeting and forecasting: Helps organizations set budgets for their cloud spending, and provides real-time forecasts of cloud costs based on current usage. This feature may also provide alerts and notifications when spending exceeds budgeted amounts.
  • Cloud governance: Enables organizations to enforce policies and best practices for cloud usage, and provides visibility into compliance issues. This capability may also provide automation features to enforce utilization and spend policies and ensure compliance to avoid costly regulatory fines.
  • Integration with cloud providers: Most FinOps tools can integrate with popular cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, ensuring organizations can monitor and manage cloud costs across multiple providers from a single platform.
  • Collaboration and communication: Some FinOps tools provide collaboration features, such as team chat and comments, to facilitate communication between teams and stakeholders.

FinOps tools: Native vs. third party

Native cloud provider tools are developed and provided by the cloud providers themselves, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Another option is to use FinOps tools by third-party vendors. Let’s review some of the pros and cons of each option.

Learn more in our detailed guide to aws finops and guide to azure finops.

Pros and cons of native FinOps tools from cloud providers

Some of the pros and cons of using native tools include:

Pros:

  • Tight integration with cloud provider services and features
  • Seamless setup and configuration process
  • Often offered for free or included in the cloud provider’s platform pricing

Cons:

  • Limited functionality and feature set
  • Vendor lock-in to a specific cloud provider
  • May not provide enough insights for advanced cost optimization
  • Limited customization and flexibility

Pros and cons of Third-party FinOps tools

Third-party FinOps tools are developed by independent vendors and provide additional functionality and capabilities beyond those offered by native tools. Some of the pros and cons of using third-party tools include:

Pros:

  • Enhanced functionality and features, often with more data visualization and analytics options
  • Multi-cloud support, which provides comprehensive cost management across multiple cloud providers
  • Customizable and flexible to meet specific organizational needs
  • Vendor-agnostic and not tied to a specific cloud provider

Cons:

  • Additional costs on top of the cloud provider’s fees
  • Integration and compatibility issues may occur
  • Additional time and resources are needed for setup and maintenance
  • May not have access to all cloud provider features

Notable FinOps solutions and tools

1. Spot

Spot is a FinOps solution that leverages automation and AI to optimize cloud infrastructure costs while maintaining application performance. Designed for organizations running workloads on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes, Spot automates resource management to reduce waste and ensure efficient utilization of cloud resources. 

Key features include:

  • Spot instance automation: Automatically identifies and provisions spot instances for workloads, ensuring cost savings while maintaining workload continuity. Workload placement is optimized to ensure high availability and performance.
  • Cloud resource optimization: Manages and optimizes cloud resources such as virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and storage to maximize cost efficiency.
  • Predictive autoscaling: Uses AI to predict workload requirements and scale infrastructure up or down in real time, eliminating over-provisioning and unnecessary spending.
  • Multi-cloud cost visibility: Provides a single dashboard to monitor and analyze cloud costs across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes environments.
  • Simplified CI/CD pipeline integration: Integrates seamlessly with CI/CD workflows, enabling developers to focus on deploying code while Spot handles infrastructure efficiency.
  • Savings recommendations: Delivers actionable insights and cost-saving recommendations, including rightsizing resources and utilizing reserved or spot instances.

Source: Spot

2. Harness Cost Management

Harness Cost Management is a FinOps tool to provide automation and cost visibility for managing cloud expenses across multiple providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It simplifies cost allocation, optimizes resource usage, and enforces governance policies. 

Key features include:

  • Granular cost reporting: Provides visibility into cloud costs, enabling allocation and attribution across teams and workloads.
  • AI-driven optimization: Automatically detects idle resources and shuts them down, offering savings on cloud expenses.
  • Cloud asset governance: Enforces governance policies with AI-powered automation, ensuring compliance and real-time cost management.
  • Multi-cloud cost management: Supports cost management across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes from a single platform.
  • Cost anomaly detection: Identifies abnormal spending patterns, preventing unexpected cost spikes with intelligent alerts.

Source: Harness

3. Finout

Finout is a cloud cost management platform for FinOps, DevOps, and finance teams to gain visibility and control over multi-cloud expenses. Finout makes it possible to manage and reduce costs without the need for additional code or tags. 

Key features include:

  • MegaBill consolidation: Aggregates all cloud costs into a single, unified bill, offering insights and granular tracking of expenses across all providers and services.
  • Cost and usage tracking: With dual tracking capabilities, allows users to monitor both cost and usage, enabling an understanding of resource utilization..
  • Virtual tagging and cost allocation: Provides virtual tagging and reallocation of shared costs, ensuring accurate attribution across teams, environments, and applications.
  • Governance and anomaly detection: Offers observability tools, helping teams detect spending anomalies and optimize financial governance to prevent waste and cost overruns.
  • Optimization with CostGuard: Offers waste detection without the need for code, identifying idle resources and providing recommendations for rightsizing and cost savings.

Source: Finout

4. Densify

Densify is a resource optimization platform that leverages AI-driven analytics to provide actionable insights for optimizing cloud infrastructure. It helps organizations select suitable cloud instances for their workloads, reducing waste and minimizing costs. Densify’s reporting and visibility help optimize resources across multi-cloud environments.

Key features include:

  • AI-driven resource optimization: Analyzes workloads to recommend the optimal cloud instances, ensuring efficient resource use and reducing unnecessary costs.
  • AWS auto scaling group optimization: Automatically determines the appropriate configuration for AWS Auto Scaling Groups, optimizing instance size, family, and scaling parameters.
  • Top-down capacity visibility: Provides visibility across cloud environments, identifying risks and opportunities while comparing results across accounts and business groups.
  • Detailed impact analysis reports: Generates reports to articulate optimization recommendations, including potential cost savings and resource utilization improvements.
  • Historical utilization metrics viewer: Offers access to historical data on CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O utilization, supporting decision-making on optimization strategies.

Source: Densify

5. Cloudability

IBM Cloudability is a FinOps platform to help organizations track, analyze, and optimize their cloud spending. It provides visibility across multi-cloud environments and assists FinOps teams in aligning business and technical strategies. Cloudability helps reduce cloud unit costs, optimize resources, and improve operational efficiency.

Key features include:

  • Multi-cloud cost visibility: Offers insights into cloud application and container costs across multiple providers, enabling teams to manage cloud spend.
  • Anomaly detection and waste reduction: Identifies cost anomalies and inefficiencies, helping organizations eliminate waste in cloud operations.
  • Automation of optimization actions: Automates resource optimization actions like commitment coverage and rightsizing, ensuring efficient cloud usage while maintaining performance.
  • Cost transparency and control: Provides analytics and reporting to help organizations understand, control, and forecast cloud costs with precision.
  • Collaborative FinOps approach: Unifies IT, finance, and DevOps teams to collaboratively optimize cloud resources, ensuring alignment between financial strategies and technical execution.

Source: Apptio

6. CloudHealth

CloudHealth by VMware is a multi-cloud management platform to help organizations analyze, optimize, and govern their cloud operations from a unified platform. It provides visibility into cloud usage and costs, enabling organizations to manage multiple cloud environments. CloudHealth is particularly suitable for managed service providers (MSPs).

Key features include:

  • Cloud visibility: Offers insights into cloud spend across multiple providers, enabling teams to monitor usage and costs for decision-making.
  • Cloud cost optimization: Identifies cost-saving opportunities by analyzing cloud usage patterns and recommending actions like right-sizing and reserved instance purchases.
  • Proactive cloud management: Automates policy-driven management by detecting inefficiencies, setting budget alerts, and identifying unused resources, helping to prevent cost overruns.
  • Customizable reporting and billing: Enables allocation of cloud costs across business units, projects, and teams, ensuring accountability and transparency in cloud spending.
  • Multi-cloud support: Provides a single platform for managing AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, consolidating cloud data to simplify management across environments.

Source: VMware

7. Yotascale

Yotascale is a cloud cost management platform for small FinOps teams managing large and complex cloud environments. It provides visibility into cloud costs, helping engineers, finance teams, and executives with actionable data to control spending, optimize resources, and prevent budget overruns.

Key features include:

  • Dynamic data views: Offers cost tracking by project, team, or individual engineer, providing instant insights across various scopes and roles.
  • Multi-cloud management: Centralizes cloud cost data on a single platform, including support for containers, AI, and infrastructure services.
  • Real-time anomaly detection: Alerts teams to cost spikes with clear ownership, enabling action to prevent budget overruns.
  • Yota Copilot for self-serve reporting: Provides access to custom reports, charts, and tables, allowing users to get answers on cloud spend without relying on analysts.
  • Cost allocation: Ensures cost attribution, enabling accurate chargeback and cost accountability across teams and departments.

Source: Yotascale

8. Cast.AI

CAST AI is an automated cloud cost optimization platform that helps organizations reduce their cloud expenses without requiring engineers to focus on cost reduction. By leveraging AI-driven automation, CAST AI optimizes Kubernetes clusters, ensuring performance at the lowest possible cost.

Key features include:

  • Cloud cost optimization: Automates the optimization process with features like autoscaling, spot instance automation, and instance selection to maximize savings.
  • Instant optimization reports: Analyzes Kubernetes clusters and provides a custom savings report, showing how much can be saved and implementing those changes automatically.
  • Cost visibility: Offers universal metrics for analyzing and forecasting cloud expenses across projects, clusters, and deployments.
  • AI-driven instance selection: Automatically selects the appropriate instance type for workloads, balancing performance and cost to meet the application’s needs.
  • Real-time autoscaling: Dynamically adjusts resources based on real-time demand, ensuring optimal performance without unnecessary spending.

Source: CAST AI

9. Usage.AI

Usage.AI is a cloud savings platform that helps organizations secure flexible and guaranteed savings on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. By offering short-term, insured savings plans and reserved instances (RIs), Usage.AI allows organizations to optimize their cloud procurement strategies. 

Key features include:

  • Insured commitments: Offers insured commitments that provide discounts on cloud commitments for AWS, Azure, and GCP. These plans offer terms starting from 30 days, reducing the risk associated with traditional one- or three-year commitments.
  • Flexible purchasing options: Enables organizations to choose between higher savings or greater flexibility, allowing them to adopt new cloud purchasing strategies.
  • Automatic rebates for underutilization: If a commitment is underutilized, a buyback guarantee ensures users are reimbursed for the losses. 
  • Dashboard for commitment management: Gives users control over their cloud commitments through a dashboard. 

Source: Usage.AI

10. Kubecost

Kubecost is a cost monitoring and optimization platform for teams running Kubernetes. It provides real-time visibility into both in-cluster and out-of-cluster costs, enabling organizations to allocate resources, optimize infrastructure spend, and enhance governance across Kubernetes environments.

Key features include:

  • Cost allocation: Users can track costs across Kubernetes concepts like namespaces, deployments, and services, while also allocating costs to organizational units such as teams, projects, and environments.
  • Unified cost monitoring: Consolidates Kubernetes and cloud service spending into a single view. Integrates with AWS, GCP, and Azure billing services, providing a picture of both in-cluster resources (e.g., CPU, memory) and out-of-cluster services (e.g., RDS instances, S3 buckets).
  • Optimization insights: Generates recommendations to optimize resource utilization, helping teams reduce infrastructure costs. 
  • Alerts & governance: Offers alerts and recurring reports, allowing teams to stay within budget limits and address inefficiencies. 

Open-source and data control: Built on open-source technology and deploys within the user’s infrastructure, ensuring that cost data remains under the organization’s control.

Source: Kubecost

Choosing FinOps software that’s right for your business

Choosing the right FinOps software for your business can be a challenging task, but considering the following factors can help you make an informed decision:

  • Your organization’s cloud infrastructure: The FinOps software you choose should be compatible with the cloud infrastructure you are using. For instance, if your organization uses AWS and Azure, you should choose a tool that is compatible with those two cloud platforms.
  • Your organization’s cloud usage: Different organizations have different cloud usage patterns, and the software you choose should be able to support your usage. Consider factors like the number of users, applications, and services that use the cloud, and choose a software that can handle your scale.
  • Your budget: FinOps tools can vary in price, and you should choose a tool that fits your budget. Consider the total cost of ownership, including licensing fees, implementation costs, and ongoing maintenance costs.
  • Features and capabilities: Consider the features and capabilities of the software, including cost management dashboards, cloud cost optimization, budgeting and forecasting, cloud governance, and cost allocation and chargeback. Choose a tool that meets your specific needs.
  • Integration with other tools: Consider whether the software can integrate with other tools you are using, such as IT service management, business intelligence, or project management tools.
  • Support and documentation: Look for software vendors that provide adequate support and documentation to help you get the most out of the tool.
  • User experience: Finally, consider the user experience. Prioritize finding a tool that is easy to use and provides adequate training and support.

Grow your FinOps toolkit with Spot

Public cloud providers offer native tools that can help your organization grow its FinOps practice. However, they may only cover basic cost management capabilities and are siloed to their own cloud. With more organizations spreading their data across multiple clouds, this approach limits visibility into multi-cloud expenses.

Spot’s portfolio of FinOps tools can help provide visibility, actionable insights, and automated cloud cost optimization for AWS users. Spot Eco can automatically manage, optimize, and purchase reserved instances and Saving Plans, helping to maximize savings and ROI on your cloud spend.Ready to start building your FinOps practice? Get a free Spot Eco demo to begin saving and optimizing your cloud commitments.