CAST AI
CAST AI is an automated cloud optimization platform that reduces your Kubernetes costs by monitoring clusters and automatically rightsizing resources across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure environments.
Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes is a digital experience monitoring platform that provides end-to-end visibility into the internet, cloud, and enterprise networks to help you resolve performance issues across your entire digital ecosystem.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | CAST AI | Cisco ThousandEyes |
|---|---|---|
| Website | cast.ai | thousandeyes.com |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Custom |
| Starting Price | Free | Custom Pricing |
| FREE Trial | ✓ 0 days free trial | ✓ 15 days free trial |
| Free Plan | ✓ Has free plan | ✘ No free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2019 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Miami, USA | San Francisco, USA |
Overview
CAST AI
CAST AI is an automated platform designed to slash your cloud bill without manual intervention. It connects to your Kubernetes clusters and continuously analyzes your workload requirements, automatically selecting the most cost-effective compute instances in real-time. You can stop overprovisioning and start paying only for what you actually use across major providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
The platform handles the heavy lifting of infrastructure scaling, spot instance management, and cluster rebalancing. It is built for DevOps teams and platform engineers who need to maintain high performance while keeping cloud expenses under control. You get a clear view of your spending and automated tools to fix inefficiencies instantly, often resulting in savings of over 50% on your monthly cloud compute costs.
Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes gives you a complete view of the digital paths your data takes across the internet, cloud providers, and internal networks. You can see exactly how your users experience your applications, whether they are working from home, in an office, or accessing services via a third-party API. By mapping every hop between your users and your services, you can pinpoint exactly where delays or outages occur, even when the problem lies outside your own infrastructure.
The platform helps you reduce mean time to identify and resolve issues by providing actionable data you can share with service providers. You can monitor SaaS performance, optimize SD-WAN deployments, and ensure your customer-facing websites remain reachable and fast. It is designed for IT operations and network engineering teams at mid-market and enterprise organizations who rely on complex, distributed environments.
Overview
CAST AI Features
- Automated Rightsizing Automatically adjust your pod resource requests based on real-time usage to eliminate waste and improve application performance.
- Spot Instance Automation Use low-cost spot instances safely with automated fallback to on-demand nodes if capacity becomes unavailable in your region.
- Cluster Autoscaler Scale your clusters up or down instantly based on actual demand using the most cost-efficient node types available.
- Cloud Cost Monitoring Track your cloud spending down to the individual microservice, namespace, or deployment level with real-time visibility dashboards.
- Node Bin Packing Consolidate your workloads onto the fewest possible nodes to maximize resource utilization and reduce your total infrastructure footprint.
- Security Audit Scan your Kubernetes clusters for common misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities to ensure your optimized environment remains fully protected.
Cisco ThousandEyes Features
- Internet Insights. View a real-time map of global internet health to see if outages are affecting your users before they even report them.
- End-User Monitoring. Install lightweight agents on employee laptops to track the performance of critical applications like Zoom, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams.
- Cloud Agent Network. Run tests from hundreds of pre-installed global locations to simulate how customers in different regions experience your digital services.
- BGP Route Visualization. Monitor your internet routing paths and get alerted when malicious hijacks or configuration errors redirect your traffic unexpectedly.
- Device Layer Discovery. Map your internal network topology automatically to see how physical hardware performance impacts the overall digital experience of your team.
- Shareable Snapshots. Generate interactive links of performance data to prove to ISPs or cloud providers exactly where their service is failing.
Pricing Comparison
CAST AI Pricing
- Read-only cost monitoring
- Savings estimation report
- Security vulnerability scanning
- Multi-cloud support
- Unlimited clusters
- Everything in Free, plus:
- Automated cost optimization
- Spot instance management
- Automated bin packing
- Standard support
- Predictive autoscaling
Cisco ThousandEyes Pricing
Pros & Cons
CAST AI
Pros
- Significant immediate reduction in monthly cloud compute spending
- Easy setup process that connects quickly to existing clusters
- Excellent visibility into granular Kubernetes costs and resource waste
- Reliable spot instance management prevents application downtime
Cons
- Requires high-level permissions to automate infrastructure changes
- Learning curve for complex custom scaling policies
- Pricing can be difficult to predict for high-growth startups
Cisco ThousandEyes
Pros
- Unmatched visibility into public internet and ISP performance
- Intuitive path visualization makes complex data easy to read
- Excellent for holding third-party service providers accountable
- Seamless integration with Cisco hardware and software ecosystems
Cons
- Pricing can be high for high-frequency monitoring
- Steep learning curve for advanced configuration and alerts
- Consumption-based credits require careful management to avoid overages