Open Source

Block Bad AWS Spending Before It Ships. Fix What's Already Burning

CloudBurn is an open-source policy engine that scans your Terraform and CloudFormation for costly patterns in CI, then discovers what's already wasting money in your live AWS account.
Get CloudBurn
See How It Works
Free and open source. Install with Homebrew or npm.

One Engine, Two Modes

Same cost rules for IaC scanning in CI and live AWS discovery in production.

Runs Anywhere

Install with brew or npm. Wire it into CI or run it locally against your AWS account.

Immediate ROI

Catch expensive misconfigurations before they ship. Remediate what is already burning money.

"
Danny Steenman
"Cost awareness is now part of our PR review process, just like unit tests and code reviews. We see the cost impact of what we build and save time reworking architecture after the fact."
Danny Steenman•Founder of CloudBurn

Cloud Costs Spiral Faster Than You Realize

Infrastructure changes come from the bottom up. Without a feedback loop, small changes turn into massive bills.

The Struggle

Heart-stopping AWS Bills

Config changes silently add thousands to your monthly bill.

Too Late to Change

Refactoring expensive resources in production is risky.

Flying Blind on Costs

Developers ship code without knowing cost impact.

Manual Estimation

Spreadsheet cost modeling is tedious and outdated.

Our Approach

The Solution

Pre-Deployment Estimates

See exact dollar impact of every change in your PR.

Catch Issues Early

Prevent expensive mistakes before they hit production.

Automated FinOps

Cost visibility baked into your CI/CD workflow.

Always Up-to-Date

Real-time pricing for every resource you deploy.

Ready to stop the surprises?

Get CloudBurn

Get Started in Three Simple Steps

CloudBurn integrates seamlessly with your existing GitHub workflow. Set it up once and get automated cost analysis on every pull request.

Install CloudBurn
Install CloudBurn via Homebrew or npm. One command and you're ready to scan your IaC or discover waste in your AWS account.
Install CloudBurn CLI
Add the GitHub Action to Your Workflow
Choose the action that matches your infrastructure-as-code tool:

For AWS CDK: Install the AWS CDK Diff PR Commenter action
For Terraform: Install the Terraform Plan PR Commenter action

Follow the installation instructions on the action page to add it to your GitHub workflow. The action will capture your cdk diff or terraform plan output and send it to CloudBurn for analysis.
Install GitHub Action in your workflow
Create a Pull Request
Open a PR with infrastructure changes and CloudBurn will automatically:
  • Detect the diff/plan output from your GitHub Action
  • Analyze the changes and calculate cost impact
  • Post a detailed cost report as a PR comment within seconds like the example below:
Automated cost report in pull request

Setup Links

Install the app and PR commenters

GitHub Repository
AWS CDK PR Commenter
Terraform PR Commenter

Community

Join the conversation

Product Roadmap
Discussions
Report Issues
Powerful Visibility from Day One

Installation is just the beginning. Once integrated, CloudBurn silently safeguards your budget and empowers your team to ship faster without financial risk.

Prevent Cloud Bill Surprises

Catch expensive infrastructure mistakes during code review, before they reach production and impact your budget.

Make Faster PR Decisions

Reviewers can approve or reject changes based on cost impact, not just code quality. No more guessing about infrastructure costs.

Team-Wide Cost Visibility

Every developer sees the cost impact of their infrastructure changes. Build a culture of cost awareness across your engineering team.

Shift FinOps Left

Cost optimization starts at development time, not after deployment. Make cost-effective decisions when changes are easiest to make.

Save Time on Manual Estimation

No more spreadsheets or manual AWS pricing lookups. CloudBurn automatically calculates costs for every infrastructure change.

Deploy with Confidence

Know exactly how infrastructure changes impact your monthly AWS bill. Deploy knowing you won't get surprised by the next invoice.

Frequently
asked questions

How do I install CloudBurn?

Install CloudBurn via Homebrew (brew install towardsthecloud/tap/cloudburn) or npm (npm install --global cloudburn). Check the GitHub repository for full setup instructions. Once installed, run cloudburn scan on your IaC files or cloudburn discover against your live AWS account.

What Infrastructure-as-Code tools does CloudBurn support?

CloudBurn currently supports AWS CDK (TypeScript) and Terraform. It automatically detects which IaC tool you're using and parses the diff accordingly. Support for CloudFormation native templates and additional languages is on our public roadmap.

How accurate are the cost estimates?

CloudBurn uses the official AWS Pricing API to calculate costs based on the actual resource properties extracted from your code (instance types, memory, CPU, storage). Estimates focus on 38 baseline cost resources with consistent hourly charges. While estimates are highly accurate for provisioned resources, actual costs may vary based on usage patterns and data transfer.

What AWS permissions does CloudBurn need?

For IaC scanning (cloudburn scan), no AWS permissions are needed. It reads your Terraform and CloudFormation files locally. For live discovery (cloudburn discover), CloudBurn needs Resource Explorer read/write access plus read-only permissions for the services behind the rules you enable (EC2, EBS, RDS, S3, Lambda, etc.). See the documentation for details.

Is CloudBurn free? What does it cost?

CloudBurn is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. Install it via Homebrew or npm and run it locally or in CI at no cost. Check the GitHub repository for details.

Do you offer FinOps consultancy beyond the CloudBurn tool?

Yes! CloudBurn is built by Towards the Cloud, a cloud consultancy specializing in AWS infrastructure. We offer hands-on cost optimization and FinOps consulting services to help teams reduce cloud spend and implement sustainable cost management practices. Contact us to learn more.