About Us
Why we built HiddenCloudCost
HiddenCloudCost started with a familiar frustration. You spin up a production workload, estimate the monthly cost at around $80, and three weeks later the invoice is $240. You dig through the AWS Cost Explorer and find a NAT gateway you forgot about, egress fees you did not model, and CloudWatch log ingestion costs that appeared from nowhere.
Every developer who has run production infrastructure on AWS has had a version of this experience. The problem is not that AWS is dishonest about its pricing - everything is documented. The problem is that the documentation is spread across dozens of pages, pricing calculators require you to already know every service you will use, and the line items that surprise you most are the ones that are least visible in any standard estimate.
What this tool does differently
Most cloud pricing tools are instance browsers. You pick a VM size, multiply by hours, and get a compute cost. HiddenCloudCost models a complete workload. You describe what your application does - whether it is a REST API, a background job, a full-stack application. You set how much data you transfer out per month. You tell us whether you use a NAT gateway, whether you run multi-AZ, whether you need a managed database. The tool builds a full monthly bill from those inputs and shows you every line item - including the ones that are easy to forget.
The comparison covers AWS, GCP, Azure and DigitalOcean. For each provider, the result breaks down compute, egress, storage, load balancer, managed database, and the AWS-specific hidden charges (NAT gateway, inter-AZ transfer, CloudWatch logs) that do not have equivalents on other platforms. The output tells you which provider is cheapest for your specific configuration and by how much.
Who this is for
This tool is built for developers and DevOps engineers who make infrastructure decisions. It is useful when you are:
- Choosing a cloud provider for a new project and want a realistic cost comparison
- Trying to understand why your current AWS bill is higher than expected
- Evaluating whether migrating to a different provider would save money
- Building a technical proposal and need defensible cost estimates
- Onboarding a new team member and want to show them what production infrastructure actually costs
Pricing data
All pricing data is sourced directly from official provider documentation: AWS pricing pages, GCP pricing calculator, Azure pricing pages, and DigitalOcean pricing. Data is reviewed and updated weekly. Prices shown are on-demand rates for the US East region equivalent unless noted otherwise. Reserved instance or committed use discounts are not included - those require a separate analysis based on your usage patterns.
We do not guarantee accuracy of pricing data. Cloud providers change prices without notice. Always verify final costs directly on the provider's pricing page before making infrastructure decisions.
Free, no signup, open pricing data
HiddenCloudCost is free to use. No account, no email, no payment information required. Every estimate generates a shareable URL you can send to colleagues or bookmark for later. The pricing data used by the calculator is openly documented - there is no black box.