Dagster vs Starburst Pricing (2026)

How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.

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

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

Free

$0/mo
  • Create and run up to 3 clusters
  • Access to standard cluster execution mode for ad hoc queries

Pro

Custom
  • Flexible cluster execution modes
  • Streaming Ingest
  • Advanced cluster management

Enterprise

Popular
Custom
  • Advanced autoscaling features
  • Fine-grained access controls (ABAC, SCIM)
  • AWS PrivateLink for data sources
  • Early access to features (Private Preview)
  • AIDA (token usage billed separately)

Mission-Critical

Custom
  • Elite support and ticketing
  • Advanced governance integrations
  • Lakehouse security and compliance tools
  • Highest uptime guarantees
  • AIDA (token usage billed separately)

Dagster vs Starburst 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?
Starburst has a free plan. Dagster doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
How do they charge?
Different approach here. Dagster uses hybrid pricing, while Starburst goes with usage-based. 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. Starburst: Starburst plays in the premium end of the query-engine and data-lake analytics space, going after enterprises already committed to a multi-cloud or lakehouse strategy rather than budget-conscious startups. They're competing with the likes of Trino-as-a-service alternatives and Databricks/Snowflake on capability, not on being the cheap option.

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