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IBM Kubecost vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) 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

IBM Kubecost
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
16th
Average Rating
9.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Cloud Management (1st), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kubecost is 0.2%. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 1.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Cost Management
 

Featured Reviews

DIRK UYTTERHOEVEN - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Vipin Kumar Sha - PeerSpot reviewer
Stands out with auto-scaling, auto-scheduled snapshots, and single-vendor support
The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware. The second suggestion is regarding the different clusters in Nutanix. Although Nutanix is very user-friendly and codeless, the individual clusters cannot be logged in at the same time via Prism, which takes time and can be wasteful. We have multiple clusters within Nutanix. Prism serves as the central management interface, allowing us to access these different clusters. When we log in through Prism, it takes a certain amount of time—sometimes several minutes—to log into each individual cluster. This can be quite time-consuming. Another important issue, especially for our customers in India and other data centers, is the need for proper VM tool reports. We require detailed information such as VM names, IP addresses, CPU assignments, and CPU utilization. This data should be exported in an Excel format. For example, if a virtual machine has four CPUs, the Excel report should include entries like: VM name, IP address, 4 CPUs, and current utilization (e.g., if 2 out of 4 CPUs are being used). We also need to capture other parameters, such as memory and disk configurations (e.g., hard disk 1 and hard disk 2), whether any ISOs are mounted (like CD/DVDs), USB drives attached to the VM, storage types (like NVM), and any RDMs associated with the VM. By extracting all this information into an Excel file, we would create a handy inventory for all the engineers. This detailed VM list would be extremely beneficial for cloud engineers and managers working with Nutanix.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers a detailed examination of your cluster, including the types of instances utilized, allocated CPU and RAM, and resource distribution for specific applications."
"I mostly like the dashboards."
"The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers."
"What I found most valuable in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the one-click upgrade and the analytics it can provide for hyper-converged infrastructure."
"We have a local partner and all the support from the vendor. It has been a remarkable experience. The product is very easy to use, and the roadmap has been executed transparently. The administration has been quite fast."
"Nutanix gives us access to a single pane of glass by which we're able to see everything."
"The solution is very stable...Customer support is very good."
"The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything."
"The administration components are the most useful since, with them, we have been able to win and perform preventive measures in the administration of the hyper-converged Nutanix infrastructure."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is a lot easier to set up compared to other products."
"The solution’s ease of use is mind-blowing."
 

Cons

"The integration with other solutions could 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."
"In the next release, I would like to see more cloud providers like Micro BH or local providers."
"While using Nutanix, we need to switch off the VM in case we are doing an update. We have to turn off the VM if we are updating the memory or hard disk space. In a normal scenario, we switch off the VM, update it and then update the RAM. Once updated, we need to switch on the machine and wait for the RAM to initialize. The same goes for hard drives as well."
"In terms of how Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved, there are some functionalities in the newer releases and upgrades that are not available in Prism Central, which lacks the newest versions."
"NCM's pricing structure is confusing and difficult to understand."
"There should be more APIs to integrate with different vendors and to integrate with the existing solutions that we use on-prem."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"The pricing of the solution is an area of concern that needs improvement."
"NCM's analytics could be better because we're not getting an accurate analysis of our virtual machines, and we're over-provisioning some of them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is cheap. Kubecost has an open-source core."
"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."
"It is expensive when you are looking at small locations that need low-latency workloads, but for larger locations, as compared to other guys, even using VMware, it is not that expensive because if you add it all up, it is going to be pretty much the same value."
"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."
"It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be in one price."
"Nutanix costs more than Hyper-V, but the price is reasonable for the features we're getting. We have better support, analytics, reporting, and other capabilities that we didn't have before. That is more than enough to justify the cost. The hardware we purchased from Nutanix was priced fairly. The primary costs are software and support. It's a subscription-based service, which can be bad or good, depending on how you look at that. For me, it makes perfect sense. We get regular updates and can get support when we need it."
"The pricing is less compared to Hyper-V."
"Its licensing is cheaper than VMware. However, the price for certain licenses or use cases is not clearly indicated. For example, replication of the cluster to switch from one VM to another when one is down is not included in the standard price. It requires an additional license, but it is not clearly indicated."
"The company frequently changes its prices, and it is not clear how the subscription-based model works."
"We primarily work with mid-level customers in India rather than enterprise clients. These mid-level customers are interested in services that are priced more moderately. In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups. As a result, we have approximately 3,000 customers using VMware, while Nutanix has around 1,800 customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubecost?
The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers.
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...
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.
Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...
 

Also Known As

Kubecost - Amazon EKS cost monitoring
Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kubecost vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
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