IBM Kubecost vs ZopNight: K8s Cost Allocation or Cloud Control
Kubecost tells you what every namespace, deployment and label costs inside a cluster. ZopNight puts that cluster in the context of the whole cloud bill and acts on it.
What Kubecost does
Kubecost is now sold as IBM Kubecost. kubecost.com redirects to IBM Apptio’s product page (apptio.com/products/kubecost), which lists it next to IBM Cloudability. That page describes cost visibility and optimization for “EKS, AKS, GKE, on-prem, and more”, automated actions such as “automated request sizing or namespace turndown”, and a free tier: “Kubecost is free to install”. IBM’s Kubecost 3.0 announcement describes a “unified agent that combines Kubecost and Cloudability, eliminating the dependency on Prometheus” (Apptio blog).
Kubecost does schedule. Its open-source cluster-turndown project provides “automated scaledown and scaleup … based on a custom schedule”. It is marked alpha and supports GKE, EKS and kops on AWS (cluster-turndown README).
Where the boundary sits
Kubecost’s home ground is inside the cluster: Kubernetes cost visibility, plus automated request sizing. If your problem is “which team’s workloads make this cluster expensive?”, that is exactly the question it was built for, and its free tier makes it easy to start.
ZopNight’s home ground is the cloud account, with Kubernetes as one resource family among many. It discovers clusters, node pools and workloads next to VMs, databases and storage. It prices them from provider pricing and billing exports, and puts them into one team and tag showback. Namespace scheduling on EKS, GKE and AKS scales Deployments and StatefulSets to zero and suspends CronJobs. It also saves and restores HPAs and PDBs, and a single implementation drives all three clouds. Kubernetes workload rules flag reliability and security issues too: missing requests and limits, single replicas, root or privileged containers, unbound volumes.
| Capability | ZopNight | IBM Kubecost |
|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes platforms | EKS, GKE, AKS | EKS, AKS, GKE, on-prem |
| Kubernetes cost focus | Clusters and workloads inside whole-cloud showback | Core product: K8s cost visibility and optimization |
| Scheduled turndown | Namespace, node pool and cluster schedules | Namespace turndown; cluster-turndown (alpha) |
| Non-Kubernetes resources | VMs, databases, data platforms on three clouds | Via IBM Cloudability |
| Free tier | See zop.dev/pricing | Free to install |
Choose Kubecost if…
- You need Kubernetes-specific cost visibility, including on-prem clusters, and a free way to start.
- You are standardising on IBM, and pairing Kubecost with Cloudability on one agent appeals.
- Your main lever is container request sizing inside long-running clusters.
Choose ZopNight if…
- Kubernetes is only part of the estate, and you want the same schedules, overrides and budgets for clusters, VMs and databases.
- You want one namespace scheduler that works the same way on EKS, GKE and AKS, with system namespaces protected automatically.
- You want Kubernetes recommendations remediated in place. For example, a single-replica deployment is scaled from 1 to 2 by a guided manifest edit, never automatically. See Kubernetes workload rules.
Questions we get a lot.
If yours isn't here, email us and we'll answer directly.
Is Kubecost owned by IBM?
It is marketed as IBM Kubecost on IBM Apptio's site, as of 24 September 2026, and kubecost.com redirects there.
Does Kubecost have scheduling?
Yes. The product page lists namespace turndown among its automated actions, and Kubecost's open-source cluster-turndown project scales clusters down and up on a schedule. That project is marked alpha and supports GKE, EKS and kops on AWS.
Where does ZopNight get Kubernetes data?
ZopNight syncs resource metrics from CloudWatch, Cloud Monitoring and Azure Monitor, and Kubernetes control-plane activity from EKS audit logs, Azure Activity Log and GCP Cloud Logging.