The Cloud Carbon Footprint (CCF) Alternative for Teams That Need It Maintained
The open-source Cloud Carbon Footprint project pioneered transparent cloud emissions estimation — but its release cadence has slowed and its emission factors drift. Here is what you give up by self-hosting a stale tool, and what a maintained, audit-ready alternative changes.
A lot of engineering teams got their first cloud carbon numbers from Cloud Carbon Footprint (CCF), the open-source project that estimates emissions from your billing data. It was a genuinely good idea and it set the standard for transparent, methodology-driven cloud emissions. But if you have checked the project recently, the release cadence has slowed and the built-in emission factors and grid intensities have drifted out of date. If you depend on it for a number you have to defend to a customer, that is a real problem.
What CCF got right
Credit where it is due: CCF is free, open-source, and multi-cloud. It estimates emissions from actual usage rather than hand-waving, and it models both operational and embodied emissions. It proved that you can turn a cloud bill into a defensible carbon estimate, and every hosted tool in this space owes it a debt.
Where it leaves you exposed
- You host and maintain it. CCF is software you deploy and run — the data pipeline, the upgrades, and the on-call when it breaks are all yours.
- The factors go stale. Grid carbon intensities and PUE figures change every year. A tool that is not actively updated quietly reports last-generation numbers.
- No audit-ready export. CCF gives you a dashboard, not a methodology-backed report packaged for a customer compliance team.
- Carbon and cost live apart. The emissions view is not tied to the specific cost actions that would reduce both.
What "maintained and hosted" changes
CloudRift takes the same transparent approach — operational plus embodied emissions, reported both location-based and market-based — and runs it as a maintained, hosted product across AWS, Azure, and GCP. You do not stand up a service or babysit a pipeline; you connect an account with read-only access and get a number.
Current factors, without the maintenance
The grid-intensity data, provider PUE, and carbon-free-energy assumptions are maintained for you, so the number reflects this year rather than whenever the tool was last released.
An audit-ready export
One click produces a GHG Protocol Scope 3 Category 1 report with the full methodology note attached — the artifact you forward to a customer asking for your cloud emissions, not just a chart you screenshot.
Cost and carbon in one place
Every carbon figure sits next to the cost action that changes it, so reducing emissions and cutting spend are the same workflow instead of two disconnected projects.
When CCF is still the right call
To be fair: if you want full control of the code, you have engineers to maintain the deployment and update factors, and you only need directional numbers for internal use, self-hosting CCF is a legitimate and free choice. CloudRift is for teams that need the number maintained, current, and defensible without owning the pipeline.
See your own wasted cloud spend in minutes
Connect read-only, run a free scan, and get a prioritized list of savings with dollars attached.
The bottom line
The methodology CCF popularised is sound — the problem is depending on an unmaintained copy of it for a number a customer will scrutinise. If you need current factors and an export you can hand to a compliance team, use a tool that is kept up to date for you.