dbt Labs 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.
| dbt Labs | Astronomer | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $100/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 4 | 5 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
Developer
- Browser-based IDE
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Job scheduling and monitoring
- CI checks on Github and GitLab
- Upgrade to the latest dbt release automatically
Starter
- Lineage with dbt Catalog
- Define & query metrics with dbt Semantic Layer
- dbt Semantic Layer basic
- API access
Enterprise
- Column-level lineage in dbt Catalog
- Governed metrics with caching
- Multi-project architecture (dbt Mesh)
- SSO, Role-Based Access Control, and SCIM provisioning
- Priority suport with SLAs
Enterprise+
- PrivateLink
- IP Restrictions
- Run dbt in your own environment (Hybrid Projects)
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)
dbt Labs 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?
- dbt Labs has a free plan. Astronomer doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. dbt Labs uses hybrid pricing, while Astronomer 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. dbt Labs: dbt Labs isn't competing on price — the free Developer tier is a land-and-expand move, not a signal they're the budget option. They're positioning as the category-defining standard for analytics engineering, so the real competition is convincing teams to pay for orchestration and governance instead of duct-taping open-source dbt Core themselves. 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 dbt Labs alternatives or the best Astronomer alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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