ArgoCD Cost Intelligence¶

ArgoCD Cost Intelligence shows what each Argo CD application actually costs, in a Cost Intelligence tab inside the Argo CD UI. After every successful sync it asks OpenCost what the application's pods cost and keeps the result, so application owners see their cost where they already work. You need Argo CD and OpenCost running in the same cluster.

Actual costs: monthly cost, cost breakdown, resource efficiency and what changed since the last sync

Quick start¶

Requires Argo CD 3.4 or 3.5, OpenCost 1.121.1+ and Helm 3.8+.

helm install argocd-cost-intelligence \
  oci://ghcr.io/octopusdeploy/charts/argocd-cost-intelligence \
  --version 0.1.0 \
  --namespace argocd-cost-intel --create-namespace \
  --set namespace.create=false \
  --set postgres.auth.password=<your-secure-password> \
  --wait --timeout 10m

A post-install hook registers the extension and the notification webhook in Argo CD. If Git manages Argo CD itself, the hook's changes would be reverted: turn it off and follow Install when Git manages Argo CD instead. On Argo CD 3.5 only the built-in admin role can see the tab at first; see Grant access in Argo CD for other roles.

Sync an application, wait a few seconds, and open its Cost Intelligence tab.

Next: the installation guide for the OpenCost URL, cluster-wide costs and upgrades, and configuration for every setting.

Early release (v0.x). Helm values and the database schema may still change between minor versions; breaking changes are listed in the CHANGELOG. This is an independent community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Argo project, the CNCF or OpenCost.

What you get¶

Actual cost per application: the monthly cost split into CPU, memory, network and storage, counting only the controllers Argo CD manages for that application, plus efficiency (requested against used) and idle spend.
Trends: a daily cost history of up to a year, a forecast and anomaly notices. The history is kept in PostgreSQL, so it outlives OpenCost's Prometheus retention.
Namespaces, idle spend, chargeback and cluster overhead: a system-level page with the cost per namespace, the applications ranked by idle spend, the cost per Kubernetes label, and the control-plane fee, for the people you choose (Choose your settings).
Rightsizing, optional: request suggestions from the Vertical Pod Autoscaler or Goldilocks, priced with OpenCost (Optional: rightsizing).
Cloud service costs, optional: Infracost estimates for RDS, S3 and other services OpenCost can't see, pushed from CI and shown next to the Kubernetes cost (Optional: cloud service costs).
Prometheus metrics, optional: the cost of each Application per hour, labelled to join with argocd_app_info, plus recording rules and alerts (Prometheus metrics).

More screenshots

Resources: cost per controller and Vertical Pod Autoscaler rightsizing suggestions

Trends: daily cost for the last 30 days with a month-end forecast

The system page, for people who can see cluster-wide costs:

Namespaces: cost, idle spend and efficiency per namespace

Chargeback: cost grouped by a Kubernetes label

These come from a small test cluster in the Argo CD dark theme, so the amounts are small.

Documentation¶

I want to...	Read
Install the plugin, upgrade it or remove it	Installation
Install it when Git manages Argo CD	Install when Git manages Argo CD
Look up a Helm value or manage secrets	Configuration
Fix a problem, understand the NetworkPolicy, back up the database	Operations
Scrape cost and health metrics, query them, alert on them	Prometheus metrics
Understand how it works inside	Architecture
Build it, run the tests, try it locally	Development
Work on the Argo CD UI plugin	ui/README.md

Contributing¶

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first; commits need a DCO sign-off (git commit -s). Please report vulnerabilities privately as described in SECURITY.md, and follow the Code of Conduct.

License¶

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.