dbt's Newest Cloud Pricing: What It Means and What You Can Do About It
Data Orchestration Comparison

dbt's Newest Cloud Pricing: What It Means and What You Can Do About It

Shipyard Staff
Shipyard Staff
As a company increases their prices, customers should see an increase in the value they are gaining by using that company’s product.

There are many factors that can go into a price increase. Shareholder demands for higher returns can sometimes drive pricing decisions that benefit investors but harm the company. Finding the right balance between shareholder interests and the company's health is an ongoing challenge. That’s the challenge that many dbt Cloud users are facing today given their two pricing changes in the last year.

While not applicable to dbt, short-term revenue boosts are often aimed at increasing a company's perceived value for potential sale. In some cases, price hikes intentionally weed out users who aren't generating profit, or enough of it. Determining when the cost and effort outweigh the value is a decision all software users should regularly assess.

If you or your company are experiencing negative impacts on your budget because of the recent pricing changes by dbt, we at Shipyard would like to provide you a cost breakdown and comparison.

This table shows a few iterations of dbt Cloud costs, based on number of models and cadence you are running them at.

Comparing dbt Cloud pricing to Shipyard pricing is like comparing apples to oranges. dbt Cloud is priced on number of developer seats, number of models over the 15,000 model cap, and a flat monthly cost.

In Shipyard, there is an alternative consideration - execution speed/runtime. While some pipelines will execute quickly, others will take much longer by the nature of the action being processed. Shipyard only charges you based on the runtime within our own infrastructure, not the full runtime of the pipeline.

Shipyard is a true data orchestration tool. Meaning, it can execute your entire pipeline from A-Z. You aren’t limited to running dbt Core or dbt Cloud. Why orchestrate part of your pipeline when you could orchestrate it all?

Include your ETL/ELT processes, file storage systems, messages, BI tools, and much more all from within Shipyard’s user interface. Shipyard has 150+ blueprint solutions that you can use to speed up your development process. All of the code behind these blueprints is open source, and available in our GitHub repository. No code, low code, your code — Shipyard can be shaped to your team’s skill level.

Check out an in-depth demo of how to use Shipyard to orchestrate dbt core and then some.

Try it out for yourself with our free Developer plan.


Pricing Tiers in Shipyard

Developer (Free*)

  1. Limited to 1 User
  2. Limited to 10 Hours free runtime total - *after that runtime is $4/hr
  3. 72 Hours of Logs and Version Control
  4. Unlimited Projects, Fleets, Vessels, and Blueprints
  5. Github Code Sync
  6. Documentation
  7. Access to Blueprint Library - 100s of low-code templates, open-source code in Github

Team

  1. Everything in Developer Tier
  2. Unlimited Usage (with usage based pricing at $4/hr billable runtime)
  3. 30 Days of Logs and Version Control
  4. Run jobs for up to 4 Hours
  5. Priority Computing Power + Queue
  6. Webhook Triggers
  7. Credential Management
  8. API Access
  9. Email/Chat Support
Flat rate $250/mo, $5/hr of billable runtime, 1st 10 hours free

Why would someone upgrade from the free plan?

  • They need more than 1 user in the organization.
  • They need to control user permissions with basic roles (Viewer, Creator, Editor, Admin)
  • They need to see logs and version control for over 72 hours
  • They need API Access to programmatically:

Add/Edit Fleets

Trigger with Overrides

Export Logs

  • They need to trigger Fleets programmatically with Webhooks
  • They want access to unlimited hours (instead of constantly having runs get stopped because hours run out)

Enterprise

Enterprise is an annual commitment that can be paid monthly. It comes with a completely separate MSA (Master Services Agreement), SOW (Scope of Work), and DPA (Data Processing Addendum) that offer a higher level of service and guarantees.

The main changes are related to security. Once security becomes important for the organization, the Enterprise plan is the right choice.

Flat rate $1250/mo, $4/hr of billable runtime, 1st 10 hours free

Why would someone upgrade from the Team plan?

  • They need more days of logs and version control
  • They need to create custom roles for their user permissions.
  • They need Vessels to run longer than 1hr per Vessel
  • They need to control which users have access to which credentials
  • They need to see an audit log of user activity
  • They need to enforce SSO for users in their organization
  • They need to enforce MFA for users in their organization

Customizable based on your organization’s needs

Contact Us for more details.

Summary

We understand that data teams need to be flexible in the day to day work lives, but also with what tools make the most sense for them in function and cost. If you have any questions bout how you can use Shipyard to orchestrate dbt Core and all parts of your pipeline, we're all ears.

Give Shipyard a try now with our free plan.