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Apptio Costing vs CloudZero comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apptio Costing
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CloudZero
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of Apptio Costing is 0.9%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudZero is 2.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Cost Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudZero2.6%
Apptio Costing0.9%
Other96.5%
Cloud Cost Management
 

Featured Reviews

Noah Trevor - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Unilever Inc.
Improved financial transparency has driven data-based decisions and optimized IT service costs
Apptio Costing offers exceptional reporting features that are second to none, showing companies what data to collect and how to go about creating and collecting consistent data, providing visibility into the IT department unlike any other software, and always improving and getting better. The reporting feature is second to none. The standard out-of-the-box reporting shows incredible insights and gives the information executives need to make the correct decisions easily. Service costing is another valuable feature. If you have to buy any module, this will be it. Comprehensive bottom-up service cost analysis and reporting is excellent. Apptio Costing has positively impacted my organization in every way. It has been beneficial to each and every customer, and its relatively quick implementation process saves time. The savings that are provided by finding unnecessary servers, expensive storage, or even phone bills that are not being utilized but paid for is incredible. Employees can make better decisions based on facts and not on assumptions about the unknown benefit of the IT department. Our IT department is now treated as an asset to the business and not just an expense. Our company can now make better technical investments and also increase productivity by a larger margin. Specific outcomes and metrics include an improvement in productivity from 40 to 55 percent improvement. Cost reduction has been significant, where we have reduced cost from 45 to 25 percent.
reviewer2795433 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Centralized multi-cloud cost insights have driven smarter reporting and proactive anomaly control
In terms of improvements for CloudZero, I felt there could be potential improvements in their budget section. I have used other tools before where the budget feature is a little easier to use in terms of the UI. I also found updating their business mappings quite difficult. When I first started using the tool, one of the first things demonstrated was a YAML config file that was thousands of lines long, which had to be updated and pushed for changes to occur within CloudZero. I would like a feature where you could update elements directly through the UI, as I understand they plan to bring that into the tool at a future date, since using that long YAML file can be very difficult and lead to errors. Although CloudZero's reporting feature is very good, I feel I have used tools that have more feature-rich qualities for their reporting features than CloudZero, which could be something valuable considering their reporting feature is also popular.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Apptio Costing has made my life much easier as I can easily adjust the budget and incorporate changes on the fly, showing management the immediate effect of business changes."
"The customization reporting in Apptio Costing provides straightforward analysis and financial insights, leading to cost transparency and planning that supports our business cases."
"Apptio Costing gives comprehensive visibility into IT expenditures and excels in offering actionable insights that fuel cost optimization and enable me to make data-driven decisions easily."
"Apptio Costing has positively impacted my organization as this tool has been a true game-changer because the CFO of our organization trusts the budgets as he is able to see the details, avoiding arbitrary cuts to the budget and enabling us to repurpose staff from one department to another with a better handle on our vacancies against the budget."
"Apptio Costing has positively impacted my organization in every way, being beneficial to each and every customer, saving time with its relatively quick implementation process, and delivering incredible savings by uncovering unnecessary servers, expensive storage, and unused but paid-for phone bills so employees can make better decisions based on facts and our IT department is treated as an asset to the business and not just an expense."
"Apptio Costing is very easy to use and is a great tool for planning models for project budget and forecasting that is highly recommendable."
"Since using this tool, we have seen a significant return on investment because it gives us the ability to see and manage our finances."
"Apptio Costing is a very insightful tool that helps us with a lot of insights, allowing us to make data-driven decisions, especially the financial decisions, more easily with a lot of confidence and accuracy."
"CloudZero's best feature is the dashboarding capabilities."
"CloudZero is a great tool; I have definitely enjoyed using it and have seen business benefits from it, so I am very happy with the tool."
"The best part of CloudZero is the UI for creating dashboards."
 

Cons

"I would access more of our plans in Apptio Costing, as I have to archive or purge prior monthly plans to keep the system running faster for our users."
"I think there is still room for improvement because, in my opinion, the ITP, IT Planning interface is a bit clunky."
"To improve Apptio Costing, a fixed asset data input needs to allow for more details such as quantities by line item, not by total amount, and I would appreciate access to more of our plans, as we have to achieve or purge prior monthly plans in order to keep the system running faster for our users."
"Apptio Costing can be improved with more spend AI insights."
"One way Apptio Costing can be improved is that data linking has been a limitation for any organization when integrating with other applications like Snowflake or ERP."
"The user interface should be more intuitive and user-friendly, especially for new learners to adapt more quickly."
"One area where Apptio Costing can be improved is in the data link, which has been a limitation for my organization when integrating with other applications such as Snowflake or ERP."
"I think Apptio Costing could be improved, particularly the user interface."
"I chose a rating of seven because I'm looking for CloudZero to focus more on the optimization side and Kubernetes clustering."
"In terms of improvements for CloudZero, I felt there could be potential improvements in their budget section."
"I would not recommend it to small setups."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Insurance Company
73%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Real Estate/Law Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Performing Arts
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apptio Costing?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I found it to be very cost-effective and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with Apptio Costing?
One way Apptio Costing can be improved is that data linking has been a limitation for any organization when integrating with other applications like Snowflake or ERP.The user interface should be im...
What is your primary use case for Apptio Costing?
Apptio Costing is used primarily for IT budgeting and forecasting, for both departmental operating expenses and project financial categories, many of which are internally tracked and critical for o...
What needs improvement with CloudZero?
I would appreciate CloudZero to have the capability to integrate with more cloud providers. Beyond integration with additional cloud providers, I would prefer CloudZero to introduce enhanced capabi...
What advice do you have for others considering CloudZero?
I would rate CloudZero as a seven on a scale of one to ten. I would rate the customer support a nine on a scale of one to ten. Others looking into using CloudZero should experiment with their data ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudZero?
I'm not aware of the POC pricing, but I believe CloudZero did not charge us during the POC, so I'm uncertain.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Apptio Costing and Planing
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Apptio Costing vs. CloudZero and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.