CloudBurn

CloudBurn is the proactive FinOps shield engineered for modern development teams deploying on AWS. It's built specifically for developers and platform engineers using Terraform or AWS CDK who are tired of the reactive, post-mortem shock of a spiraling cloud bill. The core problem it tackles is the critical absence of a financial feedback loop during the development cycle. Teams currently make infrastructure changes in isolation, deploy them, and only discover the cost impact weeks later when the bill arrives—long after changes are costly and risky to undo. CloudBurn flips this broken model on its head by injecting real-time, actionable AWS cost intelligence directly into the code review process. When a pull request with infrastructure changes is opened, CloudBurn automatically analyzes the diff, calculates the precise monthly cost impact using live AWS pricing data, and posts a clear, detailed report as a PR comment. This transforms cost from a post-deployment accounting surprise into a first-class, pre-deployment engineering metric. It empowers teams to debate, optimize, and prevent expensive mistakes while the code is still in review and changes are trivial to make. By integrating seamlessly into your existing GitHub CI/CD workflow, CloudBurn enables a culture of cost-aware development, delivers immediate ROI by catching costly misconfigurations early, and ensures your team ships infrastructure with both performance and budget in mind.

Real-Time Pre-Deployment Cost Analysis

CloudBurn provides instant, accurate cost estimates for every infrastructure change before it merges into your main branch. By analyzing the output of your cdk diff or terraform plan, it calculates the precise monthly dollar impact using up-to-the-minute AWS pricing data. This feature eliminates guesswork and outdated spreadsheet models, giving developers and reviewers a clear financial context for every architectural decision during the code review phase, when it matters most.

Automated GitHub PR Comments

The tool seamlessly integrates into your GitHub workflow, automatically posting detailed cost reports as comments on relevant pull requests. This happens within seconds of a PR being opened or updated, requiring zero manual intervention. The comment breaks down costs per resource, shows the overall monthly change, and provides granular pricing details, making cost visibility an inherent, non-disruptive part of your standard development and review process.

Support for Terraform & AWS CDK

CloudBurn is built for the tools modern engineering teams use. It offers dedicated, easy-to-install GitHub Actions for both AWS CDK (CDK Diff PR Commenter) and Terraform (Terraform Plan PR Commenter). This native support ensures accurate parsing of infrastructure changes and reliable cost calculations, whether your team prefers declarative Terraform HCL or the programmatic power of the AWS CDK.

Proactive Cost Anomaly Prevention

Beyond simple reporting, CloudBurn acts as a financial guardrail for your infrastructure. By highlighting expensive resource changes—like accidentally provisioning a cluster of xlarge instances instead of micros—it prevents costly misconfigurations from ever reaching production. This proactive shield helps teams catch mistakes that could add thousands to the monthly bill, turning potential financial disasters into minor, pre-merge discussion points.

Enabling Cost-Aware Code Reviews

Engineering teams can integrate financial accountability directly into their peer review process. Reviewers no longer have to wonder about the cost implications of a change; they are presented with a clear dollar figure alongside the code diff. This empowers teams to ask questions like "Is this the most cost-effective way to achieve our goal?" and fosters a collaborative culture where cost optimization is a shared engineering responsibility, not just a finance team concern.

Preventing Costly Deployment Mistakes

Platform and DevOps engineers use CloudBurn as a critical safety net. It automatically flags high-cost changes in pull requests, such as unintentionally switching instance types, enabling expensive features, or misconfiguring auto-scaling groups. This allows teams to catch and correct errors that would otherwise go unnoticed until the next billing cycle, preventing budget overruns and the painful, risky process of refactoring live production resources.

Streamlining FinOps for Engineering Teams

CloudBurn automates the first and most crucial step of the FinOps lifecycle—inform. It provides engineers with real-time cost data exactly when and where they need it: as they are writing and reviewing infrastructure code. This eliminates the friction and delay of manual cost estimation processes, seamlessly embedding financial governance into the CI/CD pipeline and allowing FinOps practices to scale with engineering velocity.

Onboarding and Educating Developers

For teams growing their cloud expertise, CloudBurn serves as an invaluable educational tool. New developers can see the direct cost impact of their infrastructure choices as they learn, building cost intuition from day one. It provides immediate, contextual feedback, helping to train engineers to think about cost efficiency as a fundamental aspect of building and shipping cloud-native applications.

How does CloudBurn calculate cost estimates?

CloudBurn calculates estimates by analyzing the infrastructure-as-code diff from your pull request (via cdk diff or terraform plan). It identifies the specific AWS resources being added, modified, or removed. Then, it queries the official, real-time AWS Price List API to fetch the most current On-Demand pricing for those resources in your specified region. It calculates a projected monthly cost based on 730 hours of usage per month, providing a highly accurate forecast of your bill impact.

Is my code or cloud configuration data secure?

Yes, security is a foundational principle. CloudBurn is a GitHub-native application. All billing, setup, and permissions are handled 100% through GitHub. The tool only receives the parsed output of your infrastructure diff (the plan or diff text), not your actual Terraform state files, AWS credentials, or repository code. This architecture ensures your sensitive configuration and cloud access remain entirely within your secure GitHub environment.

What is the difference between the Community and Pro plans?

The Community plan is free forever and provides core cost estimation functionality for unlimited users and repositories. The Pro plan includes advanced features such as cost trend analysis over time, the ability to set custom cost budgets and alerts for PRs, detailed historical reporting, and priority support. New users can experience all Pro features for free during a 14-day trial with no credit card required.

How quickly does the cost comment appear on a pull request?

The cost report comment is posted automatically and typically appears on your pull request within seconds. The speed depends on the complexity of your infrastructure diff and the runtime of your GitHub Action workflow that generates the cdk diff or terraform plan. Once CloudBurn receives the diff output from the action, its analysis and comment posting are near-instantaneous.