Prefect vs Census Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
Hobby
- Workflow scheduling
- 2 users
- Up to 5 deployments
- 500 min of Prefect Serverless
- Workflow observability
- Logging & alerting
- 7 days run retention
Starter
- 3 users
- Up to 20 deployments
- 75 hours of Prefect Serverless
- Bring your own compute
- Webhooks
- 1,250 API requests/min
Team
- 4-8 users
- Up to 100 deployments
- 225 hours of Prefect Serverless
- Service accounts
- 24 hour audit log
- 50 automations
Pro
- 5-20 users
- Up to 1,000 deployments
- 250 hours of Prefect Serverless
- Multiple workspaces
- SSO (SAML/OIDC)
- Basic RBAC
Enterprise
- 5+ users
- Unlimited deployments
- Custom Prefect Serverless
- RBAC + ACLs
- Directory Sync (SCIM)
- IP allowlisting & PrivateLink
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
Prefect vs Census 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?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Prefect uses hybrid pricing, while Census 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. Prefect: They're positioned in the mid-market sweet spot — not trying to undercut Airflow's self-hosted free tier, but not as aggressively priced as Dagster Cloud or as enterprise-heavy as Astronomer. The $100/user/mo Team tier targets growing data engineering teams who've outgrown DIY orchestration but aren't ready for a six-figure platform deal. Census: Opaque custom pricing across all paid tiers signals they're not trying to win on being the cheapest option — they're positioning against tools like Hightouch and Segment as a data activation layer for teams already invested in a modern data stack. The free tier and 14-day trial per connection are the low-friction entry points to get teams hooked before the sales motion kicks in.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Prefect and Census and let you know when something moves.