Census vs Astronomer Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Census pricing | Astronomer pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | Custom |
| Number of plans | 4 | 5 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
Free
- 500,000 monthly active rows (MAR) for connections
- 3,500 monthly active rows (MAR) for activations
- 5,000 monthly model runs (MMR) for transformations
Standard
Popular- Unlimited users
- 15-minute syncs
- 700+ fully managed connectors
- 200+ fully managed activation destinations
- Integration for dbt Core
- Role-based access control
- Access to Fivetran REST API
- Access to SSH tunnels for encryption
Enterprise
- 1-minute syncs
- Fivetran Activations' Audience Hub
- Enterprise database connectors
- Custom roles
- VPN tunnels (annual contract only)
- SCIM/user provisioning
- Pick any cloud provider (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Hybrid deployment option
Business Critical
- Customer-managed keys for encryption
- PCI DSS Level 1 certification
- Private networking options
Developer
- AI-powered Dag authoring & debugging
- Flexible, scale-to-zero compute
- Hibernating deployments
- API access
- Deployment rollbacks
Team
- End-to-end observability & data quality
- Network isolation with Dedicated clusters
- High availability deployments
- Audit logging (7-day retention)
- 24x5 support availability
Business
- SSO enforcement
- CI/CD enforcement
- Audit logging (90-day retention)
- 24x7 support availability (1 hour SLA)
Enterprise
- Remote execution agents
- Custom RBAC
- SCIM provisioning
- IP access list
- Organization dashboards
Enterprise Business Critical
- Cross-region disaster recovery
- 24x7 support availability (30 min SLA)
Census vs Astronomer FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Census has a free plan. Astronomer doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Census: Census plays in the middle-to-premium band of the reverse ETL space, priced to compete with Hightouch rather than DIY scripts or cheap connectors — they're betting on being the polished, enterprise-ready option rather than the budget pick. The custom-quote-everything approach signals they're chasing mid-market and enterprise data teams, not self-serve solo users. Astronomer: This sits at the premium end of the managed-Airflow/data-orchestration space — you're paying for a fully managed, enterprise-grade Airflow experience, not a bare-bones hosted OSS instance. They're chasing data platform teams at companies big enough to have real compliance and uptime requirements, not scrappy startups price-shopping orchestration tools.
Still deciding? See the best Census alternatives or the best Astronomer alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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