CloudHealth alternatives: what changed, and what to look for
CloudHealth is one of the original multi-cloud cost management platforms. It is now CloudHealth by Broadcom, following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in November 2023, and since May 2024 it has been sold and supported exclusively through Arrow Electronics. It remains a capable product for large estates. Buyers looking at alternatives are usually reacting to the ownership change, to contract terms, or to a need for chargeback statements finance can post rather than dashboards engineering reads. This page says where CloudHealth still fits, where it does not, and how Runcost differs.
What CloudHealth is today
CloudHealth began as an independent Boston company, was acquired by VMware in 2018, and became part of Broadcom when Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023. In May 2024 Broadcom named Arrow Electronics the exclusive global provider of CloudHealth: Arrow handles sales, marketing and support, while Broadcom retains ownership and the product roadmap. The product is marketed as CloudHealth by Broadcom.
The platform aggregates AWS, Azure and Google Cloud billing data, lets administrators build Perspectives, which are groupings of resources into business dimensions such as teams and applications, and reports cost, usage and rightsizing and commitment recommendations against them. It has a long track record in large enterprises and in managed service providers who resell it to their own customers.
What it does well
- Breadth across the three major clouds, with years of coverage of each provider’s billing quirks.
- Perspectives as a flexible way to group resources into business dimensions, and a large library of reports built on them.
- Optimization: rightsizing, reserved-capacity and savings-plan recommendations with a mature workflow around them.
- Governance policies that act on the estate, and a partner ecosystem, particularly among managed service providers.
- Scale. It is used on very large estates and by service providers managing many customers at once.
Why buyers look at alternatives
- The ownership and channel change. Some organizations prefer to buy directly from the vendor rather than through an exclusive distributor, and some have reported renewal terms changing after the Broadcom acquisition; check your own renewal.
- Contract structure. CloudHealth is sold on multi-year enterprise contracts sized to cloud spend, with no public price list. Organizations that want a published price, or a smaller commitment, look elsewhere.
- Finance as the reader. Perspectives and reports serve engineering and FinOps well; finance teams that need a chargeback statement per department, reconciled to the invoice and drillable to the line, often build that in a spreadsheet on top.
- FOCUS and the data model. Organizations standardizing on the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification want a platform whose ledger is FOCUS-native rather than mapped after the fact; confirm current FOCUS support with Arrow.
How Runcost is different
Runcost is built from the finance reader outward. Billing exports from AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are normalized into one FOCUS 1.4 ledger, allocation rules for direct, proportional and fixed methods are applied in order, and the output is a statement per department, product or customer that reconciles to the invoice and drills to the resource. Showback and chargeback are the same statement with a different posting. Forecasts are per consumer with committed and on-demand spend apart, and anomalies are attributed to an owner and routed to the channel they read.
Runcost is also new. It launched in 2026, it has no public reviews or customer logos, and it is priced in four published tiers by rows of cost data, from $300 a month, never a percentage of the bill. It does not have CloudHealth’s optimization workflow, governance policies or partner ecosystem, and it does not pretend to.
Side by side
CloudHealth publishes no price list. Its pages direct buyers to Arrow. Figures reported by buyers and third-party pricing guides describe multi-year contracts priced on the cloud spend under management; they are labelled as reports here, not as Broadcom’s terms. Runcost publishes its prices, tiered by data volume rather than by a percentage of the bill, from $300 a month.
| CloudHealth by Broadcom | Runcost | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner and channel | Broadcom (VMware acquisition, Nov 2023); sold exclusively through Arrow since May 2024 | CloudMigrate L.L.C-FZ; sold directly |
| Pricing basis | Enterprise contracts sized to cloud spend; no public price list | Published: Starter $300, Growth $1,000, Scale $3,000, Enterprise from $5,000 a month, tiered by rows of cost data a month, never a percentage of the bill |
| Free tier or trial | None published; engage Arrow | No free tier; a read-only pilot on one billing export |
| Clouds | AWS, Azure, Google Cloud | AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, FOCUS files |
| Allocation | Perspectives: rule-based groupings of resources into business dimensions | Direct, proportional and fixed rules over one FOCUS 1.4 ledger; unallocated remainder reported by cause |
| Chargeback statements | Reports and dashboards on Perspectives; statements finance posts are typically built outside | Showback and chargeback statements per department, product or customer, from the same rules |
| Forecasting | Forecasts and budgets on Perspectives | Per consumer, committed and on-demand apart, published as a range against budget |
| Anomaly detection | Cost anomaly alerts | Baselines per service and owner; alerts attributed and routed to email, Teams or Slack |
| Optimization | Mature: rightsizing, commitment recommendations, governance policies | Not a focus; read-only reporting and allocation |
| FOCUS | Confirm current support with Arrow | Native FOCUS 1.4 data model; ingests FOCUS exports and native exports |
| Maturity | Established; large enterprise and MSP customer base | Launched 2026; no public reviews or customer logos yet |
Choose CloudHealth if
- You are a managed service provider reselling cost management to many customers; CloudHealth was built for that and Runcost was not.
- Optimization workflow and governance policies are the priority, and you have the FinOps staff to run them.
- You are already on CloudHealth, the Arrow relationship works, and your renewal terms are acceptable.
Choose Runcost if
- Finance needs a chargeback or showback statement per department that reconciles to the invoice, without a spreadsheet on top.
- You want a published price and a commitment sized to your data, not a percentage of your bill or a multi-year enterprise contract.
- You are standardizing on FOCUS and want the ledger to be FOCUS-native.
- You are willing to be an early customer of a new product in exchange for direct access to the people building it.
Questions
Who owns CloudHealth now?
Broadcom. It came with Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, completed in November 2023. Since May 2024 Arrow Electronics has been the exclusive global provider, handling sales and support, while Broadcom retains ownership and the roadmap.
How is CloudHealth priced?
There is no public price list. It is sold on enterprise contracts through Arrow, sized to the cloud spend under management. Third-party pricing guides report multi-year terms priced as a percentage of tracked spend; treat those as buyer reports rather than Broadcom’s terms and ask Arrow for a quote.
Is Runcost a direct replacement for CloudHealth?
For allocation, chargeback statements, forecasting and anomaly alerts across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, yes. For rightsizing workflows, governance policies and managed-service-provider use, no. Runcost is a new product built for the finance reader and says so.
Can I export CloudHealth data into Runcost?
Runcost ingests the providers’ own billing exports, native or FOCUS, rather than another tool’s reports, so migration means connecting the same billing accounts and rebuilding the allocation rules from your Perspectives. Bring the Perspective definitions to the first call.
Sources
Go deeper