Is Infracost or Zipkin better?

Neither clearly leads. Infracost starts at Free and Zipkin at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Infracost or Zipkin?

Infracost starts at Free and Zipkin at Free.

Does Infracost or Zipkin run on more platforms?

Infracost runs on Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Zipkin runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.

Can I use Infracost for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Infracost best used for?

Infracost is most often used for teams that want an expensive infrastructure change questioned at review rather than discovered on an invoice, platform groups enforcing tagging so cloud spend can be attributed to a team at all, organisations adopting finops practice without buying a full cloud management platform, engineers who want a cost figure in the editor while writing the terraform. Of those, teams that want an expensive infrastructure change questioned at review rather than discovered on an invoice and platform groups enforcing tagging so cloud spend can be attributed to a team at all are not what Zipkin is typically brought in for.

What can Infracost do that Zipkin cannot?

Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs, Multi-format parsing, Apache-2.0 CLI, FinOps policies. Zipkin covers Trace collection and search, Dependency diagram, Simple deployment, Pluggable storage.

Cloud · head to head

Infracost vs Zipkin

$Infracost logo$

Infracost

Cloud

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Zipkin

Cloud

Distributed tracing system for microservice latency

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: 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.; Zipkin less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
They diverge on capability: Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs, Zipkin covers Trace collection and search.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Infracost and Zipkin actually diverge.

Attributes where Infracost and Zipkin differ
Attribute	Infracost	Zipkin
Pricing model	Free open source tool, then per month by run volume	Open source, no licence fee
Platforms	Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker	Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted

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

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 Infracost

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

Only in Zipkin

Trace collection and search
Dependency diagram
Simple deployment
Pluggable storage

What people use each for

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

Infracost

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

Zipkin

Adding distributed tracing quickly without standing up heavy infrastructurenot Infracost
Java and Spring Boot estates, where instrumentation support is long-establishednot Infracost
Small deployments where Jaeger is more than the problem requiresnot Infracost

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Zipkin

Less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
Fewer features: sampling, storage options and UI are all more limited
The interface is dated and slower to work with on large trace volumes
Tracing alone still leaves metrics and logs in separate tools during an incident

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Zipkin

Free

ZipkinFree
- Full functionality
- No usage limits
- Community support

Which should you pick?

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

Choose Zipkin if

You need trace collection and search.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
You also want dependency diagram.

Zipkin review

Questions people ask

Is Infracost or Zipkin better?: Neither clearly leads. Infracost starts at Free and Zipkin at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Infracost or Zipkin?: Infracost starts at Free and Zipkin at Free.
Does Infracost or Zipkin run on more platforms?: Infracost runs on Web, macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Zipkin runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
Can I use Infracost for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Infracost best used for?: Infracost is most often used for teams that want an expensive infrastructure change questioned at review rather than discovered on an invoice, platform groups enforcing tagging so cloud spend can be attributed to a team at all, organisations adopting finops practice without buying a full cloud management platform, engineers who want a cost figure in the editor while writing the terraform. Of those, teams that want an expensive infrastructure change questioned at review rather than discovered on an invoice and platform groups enforcing tagging so cloud spend can be attributed to a team at all are not what Zipkin is typically brought in for.
What can Infracost do that Zipkin cannot?: Infracost covers Pull request cost diffs, Multi-format parsing, Apache-2.0 CLI, FinOps policies. Zipkin covers Trace collection and search, Dependency diagram, Simple deployment, Pluggable storage.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

Zipkin: Is Zipkin free?

Yes, open source with no licence fee.

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.

Zipkin: Zipkin or Jaeger?

Jaeger has more momentum, more features and CNCF backing. Zipkin is lighter and quicker to stand up, and remains well supported in the Java and Spring ecosystem.

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.

Zipkin: Does Zipkin work with OpenTelemetry?

Yes. OpenTelemetry can export to Zipkin, which is now the usual way to instrument for it.

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.

Infracost vs Zipkin

Infracost

Zipkin

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Infracost

Only in Zipkin

What people use each for

Infracost

Zipkin

Where each one falls short

Infracost

Zipkin

Pricing, plan by plan

Infracost

Zipkin

Which should you pick?

Choose Infracost if

Choose Zipkin if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Infracost

More on Zipkin

Keep looking

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