Our take
Pick dbt if analytics engineers who will stay on Developer Free (1 seat, 3,000 models / month, 1 project) while they open a first Explorer graph, then buy Starter at $100 / user / month when they want Catalog lineage and the Semantic Layer. Pick Fivetran if data teams who will stay on Standard’s free bucket (500,000 connection MAR / 3,500 activation MAR / 5,000 model runs) while they open a first Connections list,
Best for
dbt Models, jobs, and lineage you start at $0
Fivetran Source-to-warehouse syncs you meter in monthly active rows
Free plan
dbt $0 · for the open-source CLI. You run the warehouse and the scheduler
Fivetran $0 · introductory plan for low volumes. “Only pay for what you use.” Core platform functionality. Exact leftover dollars after the free bucket are on the estimator, not a printed seat
Lowest paid
dbt Not published by the vendor
Fivetran Not published by the vendor
Runs where
dbt Local or hosted
Fivetran Hosted
Watch out
dbt Developer Free is 1 seat, 1 project, 3,000 models / month
Fivetran Standard’s free bucket is 500,000 connection MAR
Last checked
dbt 2026-10-23 · getdbt.com/pricing
Fivetran 2026-10-23 · fivetran.com/pricing
analytics engineers who will stay on Developer Free (1 seat, 3,000 models / month, 1 project) while they open a first Explorer graph, then buy Starter at $100 / user / month when they want Catalog lineage and the Semantic Layer.
Read the dbt pagedata teams who will stay on Standard’s free bucket (500,000 connection MAR / 3,500 activation MAR / 5,000 model runs) while they open a first Connections list, then pay list-price MAR (pricing-page examples: Facebook Ads $22.06, Google Analytics 4 $15.88, four-connector total $511.15) when they outgrow the free rows.
Read the Fivetran page
