Census vs Dagster 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 Dagster
Starts at Custom $10/mo
Number of plans 4 3
Free plan —
Free trial
Pricing model usage-based hybrid

Census

Official page

Free

$0/mo
  • 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
Custom
  • 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

Custom
  • 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

Custom
  • Customer-managed keys for encryption
  • PCI DSS Level 1 certification
  • Private networking options

Dagster

Official page

Solo Plan

$10/mo
  • Pay-as-you-go $0.040/credit
  • Serverless compute $0.010/minute
  • 1 User
  • 1 Code location
  • 1 Deployment
  • 30-day free trial
  • Asset-based orchestration
  • Workflow-based orchestration
  • Local development workflow (dg CLI)
  • Components
  • Declarative Automation
  • Partitions and backfills
  • Branch deployments
  • Virtual assets (Preview)
  • Asset checks
  • Freshness policies (new API, now GA)
  • Integration with dbt tests
  • Asset Health status
  • Asset metadata in UI
  • Asset-level lineage
  • Platform and pipeline metrics (30-day lookback)
  • Materialization success rate, failure count, step execution time
  • Metrics-based alerts
  • Dagster skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex (open source)
  • Dagster+ MCP server (Preview)
  • Alerts: email, Slack, Microsoft Teams
  • Alert policy types: asset, run, code location, automation, agent downtime
  • Serverless deployments
  • Hybrid deployments — ECS, Kubernetes, Docker, Azure, local
  • Terraform and Pulumi providers
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • GDPR
  • Data portability
  • Dagster community
  • Support Center and Ask AI
  • Billing support

Starter Plan

$100/mo
  • Pay-as-you-go $0.035/credit
  • Serverless compute $0.010/minute
  • Up to 3 Users
  • 5 Code locations
  • 1 Deployment
  • Catalog Search
  • 30-day free trial
  • Asset-based orchestration
  • Workflow-based orchestration
  • Local development workflow (dg CLI)
  • Components
  • Declarative Automation
  • Partitions and backfills
  • Branch deployments
  • Virtual assets (Preview)
  • Asset checks
  • Freshness policies (new API, now GA)
  • Integration with dbt tests
  • Asset Health status
  • Asset metadata in UI
  • Asset-level lineage
  • Data Column Lineage
  • Catalog search
  • Platform and pipeline metrics (30-day lookback)
  • Materialization success rate, failure count, step execution time
  • Metrics-based alerts
  • Dagster skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex (open source)
  • Dagster+ MCP server (Preview)
  • Alerts: email, Slack, Microsoft Teams
  • Alert policy types: asset, run, code location, automation, agent downtime
  • Role-based access control
  • RBAC scope: Per deployment
  • Assignable roles: View, Catalog Viewer, Launcher, Editor, Admin
  • Serverless deployments
  • Hybrid deployments — ECS, Kubernetes, Docker, Azure, local
  • Terraform and Pulumi providers
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • GDPR
  • Data portability
  • Dagster community
  • Support Center and Ask AI
  • Billing support

Pro Plan

Custom
  • Custom Serverless compute
  • Unlimited code locations
  • Unlimited deployments
  • Cost Tracking and Insights
  • Personalized Onboarding Support
  • Private Slack channel
  • Uptime SLAs
  • Custom Security Questionnaires
  • Asset-based orchestration
  • Workflow-based orchestration
  • Local development workflow (dg CLI)
  • Components
  • Declarative Automation
  • Partitions and backfills
  • Branch deployments
  • Virtual assets (Preview)
  • Asset checks
  • Freshness policies (new API, now GA)
  • Integration with dbt tests
  • Asset Health status
  • Asset metadata in UI
  • Asset-level lineage
  • Data Column Lineage
  • Catalog search
  • BI Tool Cataloguing
  • Connections (Preview)
  • Platform and pipeline metrics (30-day lookback)
  • Materialization success rate, failure count, step execution time
  • Metrics-based alerts
  • Custom metrics from asset metadata
  • Cost tracking for BigQuery and Snowflake
  • Dagster skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex (open source)
  • Dagster+ AI chat
  • Issues
  • AI proactive monitoring and auto implement
  • Dagster+ MCP server (Preview)
  • Alerts: email, Slack, Microsoft Teams
  • Alert policy types: asset, run, code location, automation, agent downtime
  • Webhook alerts
  • PagerDuty and Datadog
  • Alerting asset owners
  • Role-based access control
  • RBAC scope: Granular roles, per project
  • Assignable roles: View, Catalog Viewer, Launcher, Editor, Admin
  • SSO
  • SAML
  • SCIM provisioning — Okta, Entra ID
  • Audit logs
  • Serverless deployments
  • Hybrid deployments — ECS, Kubernetes, Docker, Azure, local
  • Terraform and Pulumi providers
  • Agent queues — multi-agent routing, multi-region failover
  • EU data residency (Dagster+ EU)
  • SIEM log export
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • GDPR
  • Data portability
  • HIPAA
  • Custom security questionnaires
  • Dagster community
  • Support Center and Ask AI
  • Billing support
  • Dedicated Slack or Microsoft Teams channel
  • Premium support
  • Uptime SLAs

Census vs Dagster 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. Dagster doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
How do they charge?
Different approach here. Census uses usage-based pricing, while Dagster goes with hybrid. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
Which one is a better deal?
Depends on what you need. Dagster: At $10 and $100 entry points, Dagster undercuts most orchestration and data platform competitors that charge per-seat or start pricing conversations well north of $500/mo. They're clearly fishing for indie developers and small data teams who'll self-serve now and hopefully graduate into Pro as pipelines multiply.

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