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HTTP/2 301 server: nginx date: Fri, 26 Dec 2025 03:22:00 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 location: https://opensource.net/startups-open-source-finops/ strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 host-header: wpcloud set-cookie: PHPSESSID=5b69f4ae62ea07816466c40d6d64811d; path=/ expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT cache-control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate pragma: no-cache vary: accept, content-type, cookie x-pingback: https://opensource.net/xmlrpc.php x-redirect-by: WordPress x-ac: 2.bom _atomic_dca MISS alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 server-timing: a8c-cdn, dc;desc=bom, cache;desc=MISS;dur=731.0 HTTP/2 200 server: nginx date: Fri, 26 Dec 2025 03:22:01 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 vary: Accept-Encoding host-header: wpcloud expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT cache-control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate pragma: no-cache vary: accept, content-type, cookie x-pingback: https://opensource.net/xmlrpc.php link: ; rel="https://api.w.org/" link: ; rel="alternate"; title="JSON"; type="application/json" link: ; rel=shortlink content-encoding: gzip x-ac: 2.bom _atomic_dca MISS alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 server-timing: a8c-cdn, dc;desc=bom, cache;desc=MISS;dur=942.0 What scaling startups need to understand about Open Source FinOps - OpenSource.net

What scaling startups need to understand about Open Source FinOps

Posted byby Matt Ray
March 19, 2024

Open Source projects like FOCUS, OpenCost and Infracost offer powerful, community-driven tools for managing cloud bills.…

Home » Blog » What scaling startups need to understand about Open Source FinOps

Venture capitalists are investing heavily in FinOps startups, recognizing the immense potential of this space. However, a parallel movement is also gaining momentum with powerful Open Source FinOps projects like FOCUS, OpenCost and Infracost.

These community-driven initiatives are accelerating the FinOps game, giving startups the tools they need to wrangle their cloud bills and free up precious capital for innovation. Buckle up, because the future of FinOps includes collaborative Open Source solutions built for the real world.

In 2023, TechCrunch reported a significant surge in financial backing for FinOps and cloud cost optimization ventures—with six startups raising a collective $187 million in venture funding. This influx of capital underscores the burgeoning potential of the FinOps sector, which is projected to reach $2.75 billion in market size this year. However, a closer examination reveals a startling contrast: these funded startups employ only 381 individuals. Despite their promising technological innovations, such as automatic workload optimizations and cross-cloud provider recommendations, these companies are still nascent.

More intriguing is the number of individuals and organizations working to provide open standards and fully Open Source projects to help companies save money across multiple clouds and in Kubernetes environments. Open Source and open standard initiatives harness the collective intelligence and experience of a global community, offering solutions that are not only innovative but also more adaptable to the diverse needs of users.

This means that Open Source FinOps tools can now enable startups and small teams to access cost-reducing capabilities that would otherwise only be available to deep-pocketed large enterprises.

The time is right. The Linux Foundation Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Cloud Native and Kubernetes FinOps Microsurvey found that cloud spending has jumped dramatically in large part due to the arrival of Kubernetes, which has driven cloud spending up by nearly half (49%).

Three examples of fast-growing community FinOps efforts:

FinOps Foundation FOCUS: Over 50 companies—including AWS, Oracle, IBM, Google, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and NetApp—are involved in the FinOps Foundation FOCUS initiative. FOCUS is a technical specification and toolkit to build and maintain an open standard schema for cloud cost, usage and billing data across all major cloud service providers.

OpenCost: OpenCost, spearheaded by a network of Kubernetes experts and part of CNCF, is a collaborative initiative receiving support from a community of Kubernetes practitioners. Backers include Adobe, Grafana Labs, AWS, Google, Microsoft and Kubecost.

Infracost: Infracost is a fast-growing Open Source project that offers pre-deployment cost estimates for Terraform. Infracost ensures cost considerations are integrated into the engineering workflow, saving money and enhancing team discussions about expenses.

Understanding these FinOps Open Source projects can save a ton of precious capital for many fast-moving companies with similarly fast-moving cloud bills.

brown binoculars — Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash

What you need to know about FOCUS

Currently, the lack of a uniform approach to normalizing cost and usage measures across various cloud service providers (CSPs), software-as-a service (SaaS) products and other billing data sources poses significant challenges in decision-making and evaluating the business value of cloud investments for stakeholders and FinOps practitioners. In a nutshell, poor practices cost your startup money.

FOCUS aims to resolve these challenges by defining a specification encouraging service providers to generate billing data in a FinOps-compatible format. This standardization enables stakeholders to compare and consolidate billing data from multiple sources, thereby facilitating more informed business decisions based on the comprehensive cost of cloud usage. The specification is intended to be utilized by billing data generators like CSPs, SaaS platforms, managed service providers (MSPs) and FinOps tool providers and practitioners. By providing a unified, community-driven framework for billing data, FOCUS addresses the current fragmentation and proprietary nature of billing schemas, simplifying processes like chargeback, cost allocation, budgeting and forecasting for FinOps professionals.

By standardizing the presentation of crucial cost and usage data across different billing sources, FOCUS enhances trust and comprehension of cloud billing data. This trust is a vital component for accelerating cloud adoption and migration. The complexity of billing data—which increases with the addition of each provider—underscores the need for standardization, especially as startups scale their cloud utilization.

These guiding principles reflect the project’s commitment to simplifying and clarifying billing data, thereby aiding startups in navigating and managing their cloud investments more effectively.

To learn more about FOCUS, check out https://focus.finops.org

OpenCost expands to multi-cloud cost monitoring

OpenCost—a landmark project in Kubernetes spend monitoring and optimization—is a testament to the power of Open Source collaboration. Initially focused on Kubernetes cost monitoring, OpenCost has now evolved into a comprehensive Open Source solution for multi-cloud cost monitoring and is even being integrated into Microsoft’s new Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cost-analysis tool to enable usage metrics collection.

The increasing complexity of cloud environments, characterized by shared infrastructure and multi-cloud strategies, demands purpose-built solutions that provide a clear and unified view of infrastructure expenses. OpenCost is strategically positioned to address this need and does it from a fully Open Source perspective. The project joined the CNCF in 2022.

But importantly for startup users, OpenCost’s recent expansion into multi-cloud cost monitoring represents another significant advancement in FinOps tool availability. The project now offers a user-friendly interface and straightforward APIs, enabling users to monitor expenses across Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under one dashboard.

Startups can aggregate costs by multiple dimensions, filter by various criteria and access detailed cost metrics. The expansion symbolizes a significant leap in cloud expense management, particularly for startups juggling cloud accounts and providers.

Starting with OpenCost is straightforward: deploy the tool and integrate your cloud accounts for a comprehensive cost overview. The significance of this tool lies in its ability to consolidate and simplify the monitoring of diverse cloud costs, enabling better resource optimization and decision-making.

Moreover, OpenCost is not just a tool but a participant in shaping industry standards. Its adoption of the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification is a testament to its commitment to industry collaboration and standardization.

selective focus photography of white arrow signage — Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Infracost enables developers to shift FinOps left

Infracost has been used by a growing number of enthusiastic developers because it integrates FinOps principles early in the cloud infrastructure development process. This approach focuses on understanding and managing the cost implications of cloud resource changes before they are deployed. By embedding FinOps practices into the workflows of engineering and product teams, organizations can make more informed decisions regarding cloud expenses.

Embracing the Open Source paradigm

As OpenCost, FOCUS, and Infracost venture into new territories of cloud cost monitoring, they stand as a great free first step for startups seeking a comprehensive, accessible and standards-aligned approach to managing cloud expenses. The promise of Open Source is disrupting the FinOps ecosystem by fostering innovation and aligning with the evolving needs of the cloud computing landscape.

Author

Matt Ray

Matt Ray is the Senior Community Manager for OpenCost and the co-host of Software Defined Talk, a podcast about enterprise software and cloud computing.

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