Pick Mage if
solo data engineers who will use the 7-day trial (no card), then buy Starter at $29/month + $0.50/CPU-hour when they want 50 AI credits and one managed environment.
Read the Mage pageMage vs Prefect
Our take
Pick Mage if solo data engineers who will use the 7-day trial (no card), then buy Starter at $29/month + $0.50/CPU-hour when they want 50 AI credits and one managed environment. 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,
Mage
**pipeline desk
Best for
Mage Managed orchestration plus $0.50 CPU-hours
Prefect Runs you start at $0
Free plan
Mage No free plan
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
Mage Extra AI $0.12
Prefect Starter (Cloud) $100/mo
Next step up
Mage Starter $29/mo
Prefect
Runs where
Mage
Prefect Local; you host it
Watch out
Mage $29 does not include compute
Prefect Hobby is 5 deployments, 2 users, and 7-day run retention
Last checked
Mage 2026-10-22 · mage.ai/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