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AWS Cost Explorer vs Apptio Cloudability comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 16, 2026

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 Cloudability
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Cost Explorer
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Financial Data Analysis Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of Apptio Cloudability is 5.9%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Cost Explorer is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Cost Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apptio Cloudability5.9%
AWS Cost Explorer3.0%
Other91.1%
Cloud Cost Management
 

Featured Reviews

KW
Cloud Platform Engineer at Treasury Wine Estates
Finops platform has uncovered waste, supports right-sizing, and improves contract negotiations
I think Apptio Cloudability is a really very good platform for costing. I do understand it can be cost-prohibitive to buy the license to use Apptio Cloudability because of the way it charges. If you are not a big enough company, I can understand that. Apptio Cloudability might want to look at costing models for smaller businesses that cannot afford Apptio Cloudability or Apptio Cloudability Premium. I believe Premium is about one hundred thousand dollars or so in US dollars, and Apptio Cloudability I believe is a little bit less than that. However, there are small businesses out there that will not be able to afford either option. I wonder if that is a market to target, to look at a smaller model of Apptio Cloudability or at least a smaller costing model that could help those businesses as well. The other thing is that there are just a few anomalies inside Apptio Cloudability that I think can definitely be improved. It seems a really small thing, but when you are using it, it can actually be quite a big thing. Since Turbonomic has been integrated with Apptio Cloudability, as good as that is to be able to get those different costing figures and larger savings, it does not give the ability to have an instant Jira ticket integration with the Turbonomic costings or the advanced costing, if you would call it, inside Apptio Cloudability Premium. In the basic costings, you can use Jira and you can open up a Jira ticket and you can have all this information straight from Apptio Cloudability straight in the Jira ticket, assign it to someone, and then someone is working on it. You cannot do that in Turbonomic at the moment. I am not really sure why. Obviously, there is some sort of development issue behind the scenes, I imagine, with the way that Turbonomic works compared to the basic costing. It would be a huge advantage to be able to do that, to just open a Jira ticket, have someone assigned to it, and then proceed forward. I definitely think they should look at that.
Chukwudi Uzoma - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved cost visibility has supported data‑driven savings and faster anomaly investigations
The best features AWS Cost Explorer offers include cost and usage trend analysis, the cost forecasting feature, service-level spending breakdowns, the tags and cost allocation analysis, Savings Plans recommendations, Reserved Instances recommendations, and reservation coverage and utilization reports. I also appreciate being able to filter by account, service, region, tag, and cost category. The features that stand out for my workflow include cost and usage trend analysis, which I probably could not imagine working without because it really helps me follow the evolution of the different costs per account, per month over the entire year to be able to give useful information to management for possible commitment purposes and decision-making. Without this service or feature, it would be difficult. I particularly appreciate how quickly I can move from a high-level cost view to detailed analysis without requiring complex queries or external reporting tools. AWS Cost Explorer has positively impacted my organization by improving our cost visibility, enabling better financial accountability, and supporting data-driven optimization decisions. It also facilitates collaboration between the teams—engineering, finance, procurement, and leadership—by providing a common source of truth for cloud spending. While I cannot disclose confidential figures, AWS Cost Explorer has helped support cloud optimization initiatives that resulted in great annual savings opportunities through Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and rightsizing initiatives. It has also reduced the time required to investigate our cost anomalies from hours to minutes. When I mention reduced investigation time from hours to minutes, the typical workflow before involved a team being lost, trying to reconcile where these costs have come from, what accounts have been involved, which services, and jumping from one account to another. For example, if leadership were to ask why AWS cost increased by twenty percent compared to the previous month, this investigation could take hours because you would need to review invoices, analyze usage reports, check which services had increased consumption, identify the affected accounts, and then contact engineering teams for context. However, AWS Cost Explorer streamlined this process significantly because it provides immediate visibility into cost trends. I can quickly compare the time periods, filter by service, account, region, tag, and cost category, and identify the primary drivers of the increase within minutes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudability has positively impacted my organization as it helps us understand cost utilization, make corrections, and understand the forecasting of the cost."
"Cloudability's customizable alerts help me maintain budgetary goals by providing recommendations and alerts on slot usages."
"We can save tens of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to create reports and dashboards."
"Cloudability positively impacts my organization by allowing for greater cost observability, which then drives better spending decisions and reduces costs."
"The pricing isn't too expensive."
"Apptio Cloudability helped us save a million dollars up until the contract renewal, and it was a large catalyst to why we were able to get a really good contract renewal with AWS going forward."
"The support from IBM is fantastic"
"AWS Cost Explorer has positively impacted my organization by improving our cost visibility, enabling better financial accountability, and supporting data-driven optimization decisions."
"AWS Cost Explorer is beneficial because you can access a simple interface where you can get an overview of all the costs you have in the cloud environment."
"I find the forecasting feature particularly valuable as it helps predict future expenses."
 

Cons

"Enhancements could be made in the user interface and customization, and leveraging GenAI would be an area for improvement in Cloudability."
"Cloudability needs to focus on more cloud providers."
"They can improve the custom range of the network."
"There is always room for improvement in education and training. We are not that mature in terms of our automation. It could help us identify where we could optimize in terms of build."
"Right now, I don't think that they do good predictions at all."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was adequate, but it could be made better."
"There are also some limitations with the dashboards and data representation in Cloudability."
"The IAM feature is something that we struggle with using."
"One disadvantage of AWS Cost Explorer is that you cannot filter too much. You cannot filter data by more than one variable."
"While there is always room for improvement, any needs for enhancement depend on specific requirements at the time. Currently, I cannot pinpoint any specific improvements needed."
"The reason I would not give it a ten is that advanced analytics, forecasting, and reporting often require additional services, as I mentioned earlier, such as the CUR, Athena, Quicksight, or third-party FinOps platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have seen ROI with the reserved instances, and having the ability to predict what reserved instances you can get. We can save tens of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases."
"Cloudability is a bit expensive."
"It justifies the cost and is worth it."
"The price of the license or the usage is a percentage of the top consumption. So it varies from year to year."
"My team is one of the most expensive teams, and we look at it quite a bit. We have probably easily saved around $400,000 USD a year."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Retailer
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudability?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was limited because it was done centrally by procurement.
What needs improvement with Cloudability?
I find that Apptio Cloudability is one of those things where I just poke around until I have what I am looking for. I would not say it is the most user-friendly system; there is a lot to it, so it ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudability?
My main use case for Apptio Cloudability is performing ad-hoc reports and monthly and quarterly reporting in Apptio BI, which help us to do number presentations with our large customers in our comp...
What needs improvement with AWS Cost Explorer?
When discussing how AWS Cost Explorer can be improved, I would suggest that if they could incorporate more advanced forecasting capabilities, maybe stronger AI-driven optimization recommendations—e...
What is your primary use case for AWS Cost Explorer?
My primary use case for AWS Cost Explorer is cost visibility and optimization, and I use it to understand where cloud spend is occurring, identify spending trends, analyze cost drivers, evaluate co...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Reserved Instance Reporting
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Uber, Pega, imgur, Pixable, Blackboard, Keboola, Avalara
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Cost Explorer vs. Apptio Cloudability and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,930 professionals have used our research since 2012.