// the find
infracost/vscode-infracost
See cost estimates for Terraform right in your editor💰📉
A VS Code extension that shows Terraform (and CloudFormation) resource cost estimates as inline code lenses, pulling data from Infracost's backend. Aimed at engineers who want to catch expensive infrastructure changes before they hit a PR or get deployed. Requires an Infracost account, so it's a client for a SaaS product, not a standalone tool.
Inline code lenses updating as you type is the right UX — far better than running a CLI command and reading a table. FinOps policy violations surfaced in the sidebar give actionable context (risk, effort, savings), not just a cost number. CloudFormation support in addition to Terraform is a meaningful addition that most alternatives skip. Active maintenance — last push was two days ago, and the release pipeline looks well structured with pre-release VSIX builds per platform.
Hard dependency on an Infracost account means the extension is dead if the service goes away or changes pricing — there's no offline or self-hosted path visible here. The README has multiple TODO screenshot placeholders still in it ('TODO: screenshot of code lenses in a .tf file'), which is sloppy for a 1800-star public repo. The extension surface area is tiny — only three source files — so the real logic lives in the bundled LSP binary, a black box you can't inspect or contribute to. Forks-to-stars ratio (55/1842) is unusually low, suggesting it's used but not extended, probably because the closed backend makes forking pointless.