Infracost vs StackSage
Different stages of the cost optimization lifecycle. Infracost estimates costs before deployment. StackSage detects waste after deployment. They complement each other.
📊 Infracost
Pre-deployment cost estimation integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
- Shows cost impact in pull requests
- Policy enforcement before deployment
- No cloud credentials required
- Cannot detect idle resources
- No security posture checks
🔍 StackSage
Post-deployment waste detection — runs on your machine or in CI.
- Detects idle/oversized live resources
- CloudWatch metric-based evidence
- Security posture scorecard
- Cannot estimate pre-deployment costs
- Requires AWS read-only permissions
Detailed Feature Comparison
| Feature | Infracost | StackSage |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment Stage | Pre-deployment (IaC review) | Post-deployment (live resources) |
| Primary Use Case | Estimate costs before deploying | Find waste after deployment |
| Data Source | Terraform/CloudFormation code | AWS APIs + CloudWatch metrics |
| Authentication | No cloud credentials needed | Local creds, SSO profile, or IAM role |
| Deployment Model | SaaS platform + CLI | pip install or CI |
| Pricing | Free tier + paid plans | License-based |
| Supported IaC | Terraform, Terragrunt, CloudFormation, CDK | N/A (scans live infrastructure) |
| Idle Resource Detection | No (pre-deployment only) | Yes (CloudWatch-based) |
| Security Posture Checks | No | Yes (16 posture checks) |
| Evidence Grading | N/A | A-F grades based on metric confidence |
💡 Best Practice: Use Both Together
Infracost and StackSage solve different problems in the cost optimization lifecycle:
1️⃣
Before Deployment
Use Infracost in pull requests to estimate costs and enforce policies before resources are created.
2️⃣
After Deployment
Use StackSage weekly to find resources that became idle, oversized, or misconfigured over time.
Choose Infracost if you:
- Manage infrastructure with Terraform/CloudFormation
- Want cost visibility in pull requests
- Need budget guardrails before deployment
- Don't want to share cloud credentials
Choose StackSage if you:
- Need to find idle/oversized live resources
- Want CloudWatch metric-based evidence
- Require security posture checks
- Prefer privacy-first (no SaaS data transmission)
Ready to find AWS waste?
Try StackSage free to detect idle resources and security issues in your AWS account.