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Developer Tools · head to head

Hookdeck vs Infracost

Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Infracost logo

Infracost

Cloud

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.; 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: Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, 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 Hookdeck and Infracost actually diverge.

Attributes where Hookdeck and Infracost differ
AttributeHookdeckInfracost
Pricing modelPer month by delivered event countFree open source tool, then per month by run volume
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsWeb, 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 Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

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.

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Infracost
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Infracost
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Infracost
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Infracost

Infracost

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

Where each one falls short

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

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

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

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

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 Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck 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 Hookdeck or Infracost better?
Neither clearly leads. Hookdeck 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, Hookdeck or Infracost?
Hookdeck starts at Free and Infracost at Free.
Does Hookdeck or Infracost run on more platforms?
Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Infracost runs on Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Hookdeck best used for?
Hookdeck is most often used for a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled, fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately, debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fix, receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnel. Of those, a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled and fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately are not what Infracost is typically brought in for.
What can Hookdeck do that Infracost cannot?
Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations. Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs, Multi-format parsing, Apache-2.0 CLI, FinOps policies.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

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.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

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.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

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.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

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.

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