Softwr

Developer Tools · head to head

Atlantis vs Infracost

Atlantis logo

Atlantis

Developer Tools

Runs Terraform plan and apply from pull request comments, self-hosted and free

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Infracost logo

Infracost

Cloud

Cloud cost estimates in pull requests, with governance in the paid tier

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Atlantis there is no company, no service level agreement and no paid support at any price, and the six maintainers are volunteers with day jobs, which some risk committees will not accept for a component holding production cloud credentials.; Infracost usage-based resources such as object storage, serverless functions and data transfer have no cost without monthly usage figures supplied by hand, and the documentation warns plainly that engineers otherwise read them as free.
  • They diverge on capability: Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Atlantis and Infracost actually diverge.

Attributes where Atlantis and Infracost differ
AttributeAtlantisInfracost
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feeFree open source tool, then per month by run volume
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hostedWeb, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCloud

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Atlantis

  • Pull request plans
  • Comment driven apply
  • Workspace locking
  • Policy checking
  • Multi-platform webhooks
  • Custom workflows

Only in Infracost

  • Pull request cost diffs
  • Multi-format parsing
  • Apache-2.0 CLI
  • FinOps policies
  • Automated remediation
  • IDE integration

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Atlantis

  • Making Terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approvernot Infracost
  • Removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keysnot Infracost
  • Getting pull request driven infrastructure without paying a per-user subscription for a hosted platformnot Infracost
  • Enforcing Conftest policies as a blocking check before an apply can runnot Infracost

Infracost

  • Teams that want an expensive infrastructure change questioned at review rather than discovered on an invoicenot Atlantis
  • Platform groups enforcing tagging so cloud spend can be attributed to a team at allnot Atlantis
  • Organisations adopting FinOps practice without buying a full cloud management platformnot Atlantis
  • Engineers who want a cost figure in the editor while writing the Terraformnot Atlantis

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Atlantis

  • There is no company, no service level agreement and no paid support at any price, and the six maintainers are volunteers with day jobs, which some risk committees will not accept for a component holding production cloud credentials.
  • The security surface is inherently sharp, because it is an internet-reachable webhook endpoint that executes applies with privileged credentials, gated by pull request comment authorisation that is coarse next to a real policy engine.
  • It is stateful, holding a working directory and lock database on local disk, so high availability and horizontal scaling are awkward and you own upgrades, webhook plumbing, secret rotation and the host itself.
  • It lacks the features that distinguish the commercial alternatives, with no native drift detection, no cost estimation, no managed state interface and no policy engine beyond the Conftest integration.
  • Terragrunt and monorepo layouts are not first-class, requiring hand-written custom workflows and repository configuration that becomes a growing maintenance burden as the number of repositories increases.

Infracost

  • Usage-based resources such as object storage, serverless functions and data transfer have no cost without monthly usage figures supplied by hand, and the documentation warns plainly that engineers otherwise read them as free.
  • Splitting production from non-production usage assumptions is not supported in the free usage file, which the docs attribute to a missing project filter, so that separation requires the paid product.
  • The step from 250 to 1,000 dollars a month is large and the Cloud tier includes only ten admin seats, with developer seats charged at a figure that is not published, so the cost for a large organisation cannot be computed from the pricing page.
  • Estimates are list price. Negotiated agreements, committed use discounts and reserved instance economics require SKU-level overrides available only on Enterprise, so the number in the pull request is not the number on the bill.
  • The share of the product covered by the Apache-2.0 licence is shrinking. Checks, automated fixes, policies and agent integrations are all hosted-only, so the permissive licence increasingly protects the estimation engine rather than the product.

Pricing, plan by plan

Atlantis

Free
  • AtlantisFree
    • Apache-2.0, no usage limits and no seat count
    • No commercial edition and no paid support tier
    • Community support through GitHub and the CNCF Slack channel

Infracost

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 1,000 runs a month
    • Terraform, CloudFormation and CDK estimates
    • Community support
  • Starter$250/month
    • 10,000 runs a month
    • Email support
  • Cloud$1000/month
    • Ten admin seats, developer seats charged separately
    • FinOps policies and cost guardrails
    • Dashboards and audit trails
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • SKU-level price overrides for negotiated rates
    • Business unit reporting
    • SSO with SAML group mapping

Which should you pick?

Choose Atlantis if

  • You need pull request plans.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
  • You also want comment driven apply.
Atlantis review

Choose Infracost if

  • You need pull request cost diffs.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
  • You also want multi-format parsing.
Infracost review

Questions people ask

Is Atlantis or Infracost better?
Neither clearly leads. Atlantis starts at Free and Infracost at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Atlantis or Infracost?
Atlantis starts at Free and Infracost at Free.
Does Atlantis or Infracost run on more platforms?
Atlantis runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted. Infracost runs on Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
Can I use Atlantis for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Atlantis best used for?
Atlantis is most often used for making terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approver, removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keys, getting pull request driven infrastructure without paying a per-user subscription for a hosted platform, enforcing conftest policies as a blocking check before an apply can run. Of those, making terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approver and removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keys are not what Infracost is typically brought in for.
What can Atlantis do that Infracost cannot?
Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Comment driven apply, Workspace locking, Policy checking. Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs, Multi-format parsing, Apache-2.0 CLI, FinOps policies.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Atlantis: Is there a company behind Atlantis?

No. It runs as a series of LF Projects under the Linux Foundation and is maintained by volunteers. There is no vendor to buy support from and no service level agreement.

Infracost: Is the open source version genuinely useful on its own?

Yes, for estimation. It parses your definitions and produces breakdowns and diffs locally. What it does not do is comment on pull requests, enforce policy or report across an organisation, all of which are hosted-only.

Atlantis: Is it a CNCF project?

No. It uses a channel in the CNCF Slack, which is often misread as membership, but the project sits under LF Projects rather than the CNCF.

Infracost: Will the estimate match my cloud bill?

No. It is list price. Committed use discounts, enterprise agreements and reserved instances need SKU-level overrides that sit in the Enterprise tier.

Atlantis: Does it work with OpenTofu?

Yes, there is a dedicated integration guide alongside Terraform, and it also has configuration for working with hosted Terraform backends.

Infracost: Why do my S3 and Lambda resources show no cost?

Usage-based resources need monthly usage values supplied in a usage file or defined centrally. Without them they estimate at zero, which is the documented behaviour and the most common way the tool misleads.

Atlantis: What does it not do that a paid platform does?

Drift detection, cost estimation, a managed state and run interface, and a real policy engine. Atlantis does pull request plan and apply well and stops there.

Infracost: Has the licence ever changed?

No. The command line tool has been Apache 2.0 throughout, with no Business Source or AGPL episode, which is unusual in this category.

Infracost: What is a run?

Not defined on the public pricing page, and the run allowance is what separates the free and Starter tiers, so establish the definition before choosing between them.

Share

Related pages

More on Atlantis

More on Infracost

Keep looking

Other head to heads