Catch Cost Bugs Before They Reach Production. Shift Left.

We implement cost gates in your CI/CD pipeline — blocking PRs that create oversized resources, exceed cost estimates, or violate your cost governance policies.

Duration: 15 business days Team: 1 Senior FinOps QA Engineer + 1 Platform Engineer
The Challenge

You might be experiencing...

An oversized EC2 instance was discovered 3 weeks after deployment — nobody caught it in code review.
No one reviews Terraform cost estimates in PR review because there are none.
A production environment was accidentally created at 3× the dev scale and ran for 11 days.

Shift-Left Cost Management brings cost visibility and governance to the earliest possible point in the engineering workflow.

Our Approach

Engagement Phases

Days 1–3

Policy Design

Define cost policies: resource size limits by environment, monthly cost estimate thresholds, pre-approved resource catalog.

Days 4–10

Gate Implementation

Implement Infracost in CI/CD, configure OPA/Rego cost policies, set up PR cost comment automation, configure blocking vs. warning thresholds.

Days 11–15

Validation & Handover

Test gates against historical PRs. Validate blocking behavior. Deliver developer guide and runbooks.

What You Get

Deliverables

Cost gate configuration (GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Jenkins / ArgoCD)
Infracost integration with PR cost comments
OPA/Rego cost policies
Pre-approved resource catalog (Terraform module allowlist)
Developer guide — how to work with cost gates
Expected Outcomes

Before & After

MetricBeforeAfter
Unbudgeted Resource Incidents14/quarter1/quarter
Time to Detect Oversized Resource18 days0 (blocked at PR)
Cost Overrun Events (>20% budget)6/quarter0
Technology

Tools We Use

Infracost Open Policy Agent (OPA) GitHub Actions / GitLab CI Terraform / OpenTofu
Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Does blocking PRs slow down engineering velocity?

No — in our experience it speeds it up. Catching a cost problem at PR review takes 10 minutes. Catching it 3 weeks post-deployment requires a remediation project. The gate also gives engineers immediate cost feedback they previously had no way to get.

What CI/CD platforms do you support?

GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD, and CircleCI. We implement the gates natively in your existing pipeline — no additional tools required beyond Infracost.

Get Your FinOps Defect Score

Book a free 30-minute cloud cost review. We will identify your top three FinOps gaps and give you a preliminary Defect Score — no pitch, no obligation.

Talk to an Expert