CoreStack vs IBM Kubecost comparison

CoreStack and Apptio are both solutions in the Cloud Cost Management category. CoreStack is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.3, while Apptio is ranked #15 with an average rating of 10.0. CoreStack holds a 1.1% mindshare in CCM, compared to Apptio’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of CoreStack users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Apptio users who would recommend it.

CoreStack

Read 4 CoreStack reviews

269 Views
269 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Kubecost

Read 3 IBM Kubecost reviews

1,125 Views
203 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CoreStack

IBM Kubecost

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CoreStack and IBM Kubecost based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Cost Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CoreStack vs. IBM Kubecost Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CoreStack vs. IBM Kubecost

December 2025

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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

CoreStack

Ranking in Cloud Cost Management

20th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Kubecost

Ranking in Cloud Cost Management

15th

Average Rating

9.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of CoreStack is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Kubecost is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Cost Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Kubecost	1.6%
CoreStack	1.1%
Other	97.3%

Cloud Cost Management

Featured Reviews

reviewer2783919

Associate Vice President at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Cost reports have driven accurate AWS workload optimization and continue to guide savings

I can suggest improvements for CoreStack, especially regarding reporting periods. I noticed that some of the cost optimization reports generated potential savings while considering systems that have only maximum utilization of 1% or 2%. The recommendations made in CoreStack to delete a machine have the potential to generate major cost savings, but such machines should not be listed for deletion if they have maximum CPU utilization of 1%. I have concerns about needed improvements primarily regarding AWS. If a customer is running ten virtual machines and one machine has a maximum of 1% utilization, it is considered as an idle instance in the report, which completely ignores that particular machine. This should not be the approach.

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DIRK UYTTERHOEVEN

Senior Enterprise Architect at DV Consulting

Identifies and eliminates overprovisioning of expensive resources like storage, highly scalable and offers performance

I like the overall product because I can select what monitoring should be enabled and whatnot. In our case, we really focus on performance because it's clear that the price is related to most performance setups. So the more performance, the more expensive. So we look into the performance that the customer needs, and then based upon that feedback from the remote control, we change the parameters. And even the end user will not notice it is not using it, so we just make money without any impact on the end users.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mainly through improved cost visibility and optimization with CoreStack, we have achieved a good ROI, and for some customers we were able to achieve more than forty percent cost savings by identifying unused and idle resources in their accounts, leading to significant cost savings after we completed the cleanup of those resources."

"My advice for others looking into using CoreStack is that anyone who is looking to optimize their workload cost for public cloud services should start using CoreStack because of the reports and granularity it produces to optimize cost, which will benefit them."

"Currently, I think CoreStack is the best FinOps tool available in the market, which is why we are using it."

"CoreStack has positively impacted my organization by saving hours of time for reporting—for example, the governance report which my employees used to take at least four hours for one customer, and since I'm sending out 20 reports every month, that equates to 80 hours, thus saving me two man-weeks every month and approximately $8,000 in pure savings if I estimate $100 an hour for my architect."

"It offers a detailed examination of your cluster, including the types of instances utilized, allocated CPU and RAM, and resource distribution for specific applications."

"The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers."

"I mostly like the dashboards."

Cons

"I noticed that some of the cost optimization reports generated potential savings while considering systems that have only maximum utilization of 1% or 2%. The recommendations made in CoreStack to delete a machine have the potential to generate major cost savings, but such machines should not be listed for deletion if they have maximum CPU utilization of 1%."

"I give it an eight because, as I mentioned, a few things from the billing operations need to be added, and we need more security features, particularly since the market is increasingly demanding better security tools for cloud management platforms, including cloud security posture assessments."

"I believe CoreStack already has very good features in the governance and security parts, but stability can definitely be improved."

"There is a significant potential for enhancing it through the incorporation of advanced technologies like AI and generative AI."

"Faster monitoring could potentially improve overall stability in the production environment."

"The integration with other solutions could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The real savings come from using Kubecost features like autoscaling and serverless functions to optimize your resource usage. If you treat it like a data center migration without fine-tuning, it might cost more."

"The cost of the tool may seem nominal compared to the potential savings in infrastructure expenses."

"The cost is cheap. Kubecost has an open-source core."

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Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CoreStack?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is pretty good because we received private pricing, which I cannot disclose. The setup was included as a one-time expense, and licensing is str...

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What needs improvement with CoreStack?

CoreStack can improve by adding a segregation of reserved instances that are shared across child accounts or managed accounts from the parent account, ensuring a cost allocation for all reserved in...

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What is your primary use case for CoreStack?

My main use case for CoreStack is for cost optimization and billing operations, and I'm using it a bit for SecOps and CloudOps, but majorly for FinOps and BillOps. A specific example of how I use C...

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What do you like most about Kubecost?

The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubecost?

The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers. In all honesty, once you have your optimal design, you could just turn it off and then activate it maybe once every six months or once ev...

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What needs improvement with Kubecost?

In future releases, I would like to see faster monitoring because it could potentially improve overall stability in the production environment.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CoreStack

January 2026

Download CoreStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Cost Management

December 2025

Download IBM Kubecost product report

Also Known As

No data available

Kubecost - Amazon EKS cost monitoring

Overview

CoreStack® Enterprise Enables You to be agile and eliminate waste while proactively mitigating risks by making your cloud governance intelligent and autonomous. It applies Cloud-as-Code™ approach to govern the four critical components of your cloud

CoreStack

Kubecost provides real-time cost visibility and insights for teams using Kubernetes, helping you continuously reduce your cloud costs.
Breakdown costs by any Kubernetes concepts, including deployment, service, namespace label, and more. View costs across multiple clusters in a single view or via a single API endpoint.
Receive dynamic recommendations for reducing spend without sacrificing performance. Prioritize key infrastructure or application changes for improving resource efficiency and reliability.
Quickly catch cost overruns and infrastructure outage risks before they become a problem with real-time notifications. Preserve engineering workflows by integrating with tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Apptio

Sample Customers

CAMS

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

CoreStack vs. IBM Kubecost

December 2025

Free Report: CoreStack vs. IBM Kubecost

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