FinOps Framework 2025
J.R. Storment
FinOps Foundation
Key Insight: The FinOps Framework has been updated to reflect the present-day practice of FinOps as it evolves to a Cloud+ approach to managing technology spend. The 2025 revisions include the addition of Scopes as a core element of the Framework, and incremental updates to the definition of FinOps and the language used to describe the Principles, Domains, and Capabilities to align with the addition of Scopes.
Watch the replay of the March Virtual Summit to learn all about Framework 2025.
What is the FinOps Framework?
The FinOps Framework offers building blocks for a successful FinOps practice. It encompasses principles, personas, measures of success, maturity characteristics, and functional activities in a common language that reflect how successful Practitioners drive value from technology spend.
How to use the Framework:
The Framework is flexible and non-prescriptive. With components that FinOps Practitioners can select from, it enables organizations to start where the greatest need is, and evolve their FinOps practice in scale, scope, and maturity as business value warrants.
Where the Framework comes from:
The Framework has been iteratively developed from real-world Practitioner experiences. Thousands of Practitioners and other industry experts continuously collaborate to share learnings through open-source best practices.
Framework 2025 reflects the fact that FinOps Practitioners are managing Cloud+ other technology costs, and empowers Leadership with a holistic view of all technology spending to drive better business decisions. Many organizations find themselves managing cloud infrastructure in addition to data centers, private clouds, and SaaS costs, and want to make more optimal decisions with unified data. Framework 2025 reflects this reality and provides building blocks to support a complex technology landscape at any organization.
The FinOps Foundation has seen the evolution of FinOps to Cloud+ other technology costs for a more complete picture of cost to drive value-based decision-making.
In October 2024, the Foundation’s Technical Advisory Council (TAC) approved Scopes as a new element in the FinOps Framework to capture the different types of technology cost and usage data that FinOps Practitioners are managing. As part of the Framework 2025 revision approved in March 2025, the definition of a Scope has been further clarified and expanded:
A FinOps Scope is defined as a segment of technology-related spending to which FinOps Practitioners apply FinOps concepts.
Through our work with the community, TAC, and Working Groups, the initial FinOps Scopes identified were Public Cloud, SaaS, and Data Center. Public Cloud remains the primary Scope, as the practice of FinOps was born to address the cost management challenges that arose with the introduction of cloud.
The updated definition means that Practitioners can define their own Scopes, and that those Scopes may sit across multiple types of technology spending, or multiple Scopes may be defined within a single provider. Practitioners have begun defining their own Scopes to manage things like, Private Cloud, Licensing, and AI costs in addition to Public Cloud spend.
A single company might have multiple Scopes. In one company with a hub-and-spoke FinOps practice, each spoke may be managing different Scopes with different priorities, driven by each respective business unit’s strategy. This strategy gets to another critical thing to recognize with Scopes: that they change how the practice of FinOps itself is applied.
The FinOps Foundation does not define or limit the world of possible Scopes. Instead, using the definition provided, a company creates their own custom Scope(s), based on the mix of technologies and spend that is important to their business objectives at the time.
The State of FinOps 2025 revealed that Scopes are not just affecting the type of spending being managed, but the profile of the FinOps practice itself. While Optimization was the top priority for Cloud, Optimization was not in the top 5 priorities for SaaS, AI, Licensing, or Data Centers.
This suggests that for different profiles of practice, Capabilities and Personas involved are being applied to different Scopes of spending, as driven by business strategy. The profile of the FinOps practice changes to align with business priorities, and may sit across multiple infrastructure types, a single infrastructure type (such as Containers or Serverless), or even across other spend groupings such as Licensing or AI.
It’s important to note that Scopes are not simply a data source or type of infrastructure. They are a segment of technology-related spending to which the FinOps practitioners apply FinOps concepts. In one Scope, the business strategy may require extra focus on Workload Optimization or Rate Optimization, and in another Scope, the business may require extra priority on Allocation, or in another on Forecasting accuracy.
A Scope may turn on or off certain Capabilities due to relevance or prioritization, it may include or exclude a specific Persona from involvement, or it may change the thresholds for metrics associated with a Capability depending on the business strategy passed down from Leadership.
With FinOps Scopes, Practitioners create the context that drives how to apply the FinOps Framework. Each Scope encompasses a segment of technology usage and cost to which Practitioners can apply FinOps concepts; This could be in a single type of infrastructure like Cloud, or across multiple types like SaaS, PaaS, Data Centers, or Private Cloud.
Practitioners are also enabled to apply the Framework beyond infrastructure to other groupings of spend, like AI and Licensing costs, for example. Your organization’s technology strategy and business priorities will influence the number of FinOps Scopes that will be part of your practice.The graphic below illustrates the concept of FinOps Scopes by highlighting Data Center, Containers, and Licenses as three examples of Scopes in the era of Cloud+.
This construct helps frame conversations and expectations about which Personas, Domains, and Capabilities apply for the Scope, so the FinOps practice can deliver business value based on business strategy and adjust the Scope profile to react to changes in strategy.
We can visualize the concept of creating a FinOps Scope by viewing the Framework poster from the top-down. In these examples, the FinOps Scope for AI and the FinOps Scope for Licensing each determine which Personas, Domains, and Capabilities will be involved.
View of applicable Framework elements for the AI Scope.
View of applicable Framework elements for the Licensing Scope.
The FinOps Framework provides flexible building blocks to help Practitioners continuously evaluate and reprioritize the Capabilities that will drive the most value for their organization as their operational needs change based on business strategy, scale and complexity.
Scopes provide an implementation roadmap or practice profile for how FinOps achieves the business and technology goals defined by Leadership. A Scope is constantly evolving based on results and outcomes as Practitioners move through the iterative lifecycle of the Framework. Outputs from the Operate Phase inform changes to the Scope (Inform Phase), then further refinements are set as targets in the Optimize Phase, and the cycle repeats. These changes are constantly influenced by changing business needs to drive desired business value outputs, in addition to providing inputs for further strategy discussions by Leadership.
The definition-based approach to Scopes aligns with the intentional flexibility of the Framework and the iterative nature of FinOps, allowing each company to design the custom FinOps practice that fits their current investment and strategic needs. With these updates, Practitioners are enabled to align their FinOps practice to their organization’s business and technology strategies.
This year’s revisions are driven by the addition of FinOps Scopes as a core element of the Framework, with small updates to the definition of FinOps and the language used to describe the Principles, Domains, and Capabilities so they align with the addition of Scopes.
The definition of FinOps has been updated to reflect this era of Cloud+ other technology cost data that FinOps Practitioners are managing.
The words, “and technology” were added to the 2025 definition:
FinOps Principles act as a north star, guiding the activities of a FinOps practice. Four Principles have been updated to balance the primary scope of cloud with language that acknowledges the other types of cost data that FinOps Practitioners are managing. This is the first time the FinOps Principles have changed since they were originally crafted in 2019.
The following two Principles have been reworded to encompass a broader view of technology cost and usage data:
And these two Principles have been reworded to reflect that data has always needed to be accurate, and to better describe the bottoms-up approach that FinOps employs:
The table below provides an overview of the updates to the FinOps Principles introduced with Framework 2025.
FinOps Domains are the fundamental business outcomes organizations should achieve from a FinOps practice.
The word “cloud” was removed from the name of two Domains to reflect that cloud is not the only Scope of technology cost data being managed by Practitioners:
FinOps Capabilities are the core practices, processes, and tools that organizations use to effectively manage and optimize their cloud and technology operations.
FinOps Practitioners do not need to apply all Capabilities, but should assess their organization’s needs and prioritize improving Capabilities that will drive the most value. This flexible approach also applies to Cloud+ other technology costs; Different Scopes will require different Capabilities, and maturing each one to a different level depending on your organization’s needs.
One Capability has been renamed to reflect the addition of Scopes:
The 2025 revisions to the FinOps Framework mark the new era of Cloud+ that FinOps Practitioners are in today. These updates to the definition of FinOps, the Principles, the Domains and Capabilities reflect the expansion of FinOps to new Scopes of technology cost data being managed. Community contributions have played a pivotal role in shaping these revisions, ensuring that the FinOps Framework remains relevant and responsive to the needs of Practitioners. We are excited to introduce these new updates, and thank the community for their input.
Why was the Framework updated?
The FinOps Framework has been updated to reflect the present-day practice of FinOps as it evolves to a Cloud+ approach to managing technology spend.
What was updated in Framework 2025?
The 2025 revisions include the addition of Scopes as a core element of the Framework, and incremental updates to the definition of FinOps and the language used to describe the Principles, Domains, and Capabilities to align with the addition of Scopes.
Is FinOps moving away from Public Cloud?
No, Public Cloud will always be the primary Scope of FinOps, as FinOps was born to address the challenges that arose with the variable cost model of the Cloud. FinOps aims to help all practitioners, and many practitioners are being asked to take on responsibilities in addition to public cloud – including for SaaS, licensing, private cloud, and data center. Framework 2025 reflects this reality.
What does “Cloud+” mean?
The FinOps Framework reflects what is happening in the industry based on survey data and community feedback. Many companies will only practice FinOps in the public cloud, but with so many Practitioners reporting that they are being asked to apply FinOps to other areas in addition to the public cloud, the Foundation has documented this Cloud+ activity that is already happening in many organizations.
Will the word “cloud” remain in the FinOps Framework?
Yes. The goal is to ensure there is a balance: that public cloud is represented in the Framework’s AND there are also Framework elements that reflect the community’s Cloud+ approach to FinOps.
Does the Framework define all possible FinOps Scopes?
No, FinOps practitioners define Scopes based on their business’s priorities and unique technology strategy. The FinOps Foundation does not prescribe or limit the possible Scopes. It aims to help all FinOps practitioners, and many practitioners are being asked to take on responsibilities in addition to cloud – such as SaaS, licensing, private cloud, and data center. Framework 2025 reflects this reality.
Are FinOps Scopes mutually exclusive?
No, FinOps Scopes are not intended to be mutually exclusive. A Scope may include overlapping types of infrastructure and/or technology. For example, your FinOps practice will focus on the public cloud, and you may also choose to create a Scope to focus on container costs. In this example, you would apply Framework concepts to public cloud costs, and also to container costs, which are not mutually exclusive.
What is the difference between a FinOps Scope and FinOps Capability?
A FinOps Capability describes how to achieve a specific outcome (i.e., Domain), such as Understanding Costs, Optimizing Usage, or Quantifying Business Value. By comparison, a FinOps Scope represents a collection of Capabilities for a specific context – like public cloud, or AI, or licenses. A FinOps Scope for Licensing, for example, involves multiple Capabilities and may span across multiple types of infrastructure.
Why does the FinOps Framework poster have different colored tabs, and a “Custom” tab at the top?
The Framework poster is designed to illustrate FinOps concepts. The tabs along the top represent FinOps Scopes; the different colored tabs highlight examples of potential FinOps Scopes to which you could apply the Framework. The “Custom” tab represents a potential FinOps Scope that you define for your FinOps practice.
