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IBM Kubecost vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 2025

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
15th
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Cloud Management (1st), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kubecost is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 1.9%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Cost Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)1.9%
IBM Kubecost1.6%
Other96.5%
Cloud Cost Management
 

Featured Reviews

DIRK UYTTERHOEVEN - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I mostly like the dashboards."
"The price is reasonable, considering the value it delivers."
"It offers a detailed examination of your cluster, including the types of instances utilized, allocated CPU and RAM, and resource distribution for specific applications."
"We are using a Nutanix cluster to increase availability because it is a very good product with everything in one box: storage, network, and compute."
"The solution has automated reports and workflows. You can configure it to automatically send out reports to the business units responsible for managing cloud costs, so you don't need to log into the tool to get information. Cost Governance's user interface and dashboards are beautiful. The customers love it because it's easy to use. They can run it and get a report an hour later to immediately see the savings."
"The most valuable feature for me is being able to find a machine, regardless of which cluster it's located in, as quickly as possible, and being able to work on it. A lot of times we are called upon to troubleshoot an issue. That usually means there's a problem that needs quick attention. Being able to find machines, ascertain their status, and do so in a timely manner, are processes that are very critical to our business needs."
"The major attraction point of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that everything is auto-scaling."
"The 1-Click Centralized Upgrades are really nice. When you go in and want to upgrade your Cluster, you just click a button and everything will upgrade. You don't have to go to each individual server to do the upgrades."
"The solution's most valuable features revolve around the single pane of glass it provides, which helps me see all my infrastructure and quickly manage VM operations without having to go to individual clusters."
"Prism Pro has given us a central administration of our entire virtual environment. Everything can be managed and updated through Prism. Being able to turn features on and off with one slide of the mouse is such a great feature. It allows us to manage storage and containers as well as the actual machines through one pane of glass. No need for any additional software. Pulse is in my opinion is one of the best features. Having the cluster monitor itself and notify support of any issues is a plus plus."
"Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused."
 

Cons

"Faster monitoring could potentially improve overall stability in the production environment."
"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."
"In some ways, Nutanix Cloud Manager abstracts out certain items in a simplified manner, which makes it good for training. At other times, to get to the next technical level, we want to actually dive in, and Nutanix Cloud Manager sometimes restricts us from actually diving into the deeper technical pieces. There's no advance button that lets us do more advanced things without having to drop out to the CLI to do the command line piece."
"Even though it's a lot easier, it could be a bit slicker for the end-users. The ability to create their own blueprints could be without their having to understand the details of what they're trying to do. If they could just tick this, this, this, and this — whatever they need — and it would go spinning those up, that would be better. Now, we still guide them quite a bit."
"It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended."
"I would like to see integrated analytics in the dashboard that accurately displays graphics, such as CPU usage, the overall health of the infrastructure, and specific virtual machines that we refer to frequently."
"The pricing of the solution is an area of concern that needs improvement."
"The machine learning can be improved. There are a lot of false positives at times. For example, I'm actually looking at some alerts right now, that some service was restarted multiple times. It is like the same alert, spammed over and over again. But really, it turns out that that event didn't happen."
"There is room for improvement in the remote script execution. The way logs are shown in Calm, it's not always keeping up properly. It's really the interface that needs attention there. I believe it is something being worked on at the moment by Nutanix."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."
"The solution is expensive."
"We have the ultimate license, so I don't know what it would cost individually."
"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."
"Compared to UCS and the NetApp storage, Nutanix is actually cheaper."
"The company frequently changes its prices, and it is not clear how the subscription-based model works."
"The five-year term for NCM's license cost and support was around five million."
"At the end of the day, the product justifies the cost, and it leads to a conversation with management over whether we actually need this feature and if there are any use cases for why we would want to keep it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
23%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise64
 

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, Nutanix Software Subscription
 

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: December 2025.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.