Infracost vs ZopNight: Cost Before Deploy and After
Infracost works on code that has not shipped yet. ZopNight works mostly on infrastructure that is already running, with some overlap at the pull request.
What Infracost does
Infracost is a shift-left cost tool. Its docs (infracost.io/docs) describe the goal as to “catch cost issues in pull requests before deployment, and apply fixes by merging a single PR”. The homepage (infracost.io) lists AWS, Azure and GCP, and it reads Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK, Azure ARM and Kubernetes definitions in GitHub, GitLab and Azure DevOps. It also offers “out-of-the-box FinOps policies” for your CI/CD pipeline.
Pricing is public (infracost.io/pricing). There is a Free tier, Starter at $250 a month, Cloud at $1,000 a month (which adds FinOps policies, cost guardrails and a custom price book), and an Enterprise tier on request. Everything we read describes work on code before deployment; we found no start/stop of running resources.
Where they overlap, and where they don’t
This comparison has more overlap than most. ZopNight also governs Terraform and OpenTofu. Its IaC governance evaluates terraform plan output as a pull-request gate. Priced-plan guardrails (a maximum monthly cost, a total budget cap, a maximum cost change) put a monthly dollar figure in the PR, and your GitHub required check enforces the decision. You can add custom Rego policies, and ZopNight never runs apply. It can also scan state to separate managed resources from orphans in your discovered inventory.
The split is what each tool does after merge. Infracost’s view ends at the pull request. ZopNight keeps going once resources are live: it discovers them, prices them from provider APIs and billing exports, schedules them, and raises recommendations with remediation workflows. A resource that was fine to create and then stayed on too long is invisible to a PR check.
| Capability | ZopNight | Infracost |
|---|---|---|
| Cost shown in pull requests | Yes, via priced-plan guardrails on Terraform/OpenTofu | Yes, core product |
| IaC formats | Terraform, OpenTofu | Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK, Azure ARM, Kubernetes |
| CI platforms | GitHub Action, onboarded by PR | GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps |
| Live resource scheduling and remediation | Yes | Not found in docs we read |
| Pricing | See zop.dev/pricing | Free, $250/mo, $1,000/mo, Enterprise |
Choose Infracost if…
- Your main goal is to stop expensive changes before they merge, and your engineers live in pull requests.
- You use CloudFormation, CDK or ARM templates, or run CI on GitLab or Azure DevOps.
- You want a focused tool with a free tier and transparent pricing.
Choose ZopNight if…
- You want pre-merge policy and post-deploy action in one place: a Terraform or OpenTofu plan gate, plus schedules and remediation on what is running.
- Your waste is in the running estate: dev environments left on over weekends, idle databases, oversized instances. See how scheduling works on EC2.
- You want IaC scans that flag resources in your cloud that no Terraform state manages.
Questions we get a lot.
If yours isn't here, email us and we'll answer directly.
Does ZopNight replace Infracost?
For Terraform and OpenTofu on GitHub, ZopNight's IaC governance covers priced-plan guardrails in the pull request. If you need CloudFormation, CDK or ARM coverage, or GitLab or Azure DevOps CI, Infracost covers ground ZopNight does not.
Does ZopNight ever apply Terraform?
No. ZopNight's IaC governance evaluates plans and state and returns a decision. Your own CI enforces it, and ZopNight never runs apply.
Why would I need runtime tooling if costs are checked at PR time?
A PR check prices what a change creates. It cannot tell you that a staging cluster is still running at 2 AM on a Sunday, or that a database has had no connections for weeks. Runtime discovery, schedules and recommendations cover that side.