Pick Dagster if
data teams who will stay on OSS / Hybrid $0 compute while they materialize a first asset, or start the Solo 30-day trial and land on $10/month (1 user, 1 code location) when they want Dagster+ without a cluster.
Read the Dagster pageDagster vs Prefect
Our take
Pick Dagster if data teams who will stay on OSS / Hybrid $0 compute while they materialize a first asset, or start the Solo 30-day trial and land on $10/month (1 user, 1 code location) when they want Dagster+ without a cluster. Pick Prefect if data / ML teams who will self-host OSS at $0, or stay on Cloud Hobby at $0 (2 users, 5 deployments, 500 min Serverless, 7-day retention) until they need Starter at $100/month
Best for
Dagster Pipelines you start on Solo at $10/month (30-day trial) or OSS $0
Prefect Runs you start at $0
Free plan
Dagster $0 · you run the orchestrator
Prefect $0 · apache 2.0. Schema.org Offer on the open-source page: price 0 USD. Run a Prefect server on your infra (self-host)
Lowest paid
Dagster Not published by the vendor
Prefect Starter (Cloud) $100/mo
Runs where
Dagster
Prefect Local; you host it
Watch out
Dagster Solo is 1 user and 1 code location
Prefect Hobby is 5 deployments, 2 users, and 7-day run retention
Last checked
Dagster 2026-10-22 · dagster.io/pricing
Prefect 2026-10-22 · prefect.io/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Prefect if
data / ML teams who will self-host OSS at $0, or stay on Cloud Hobby at $0 (2 users, 5 deployments, 500 min Serverless, 7-day retention) until they need Starter at $100/month or Team at $100/user/month for more deployments, service accounts, and a 24-hour audit log.
Read the Prefect page