dbt is a Data integration & ETL tool: Transform data in the warehouse with SQL.

How much does dbt cost?

dbt uses a Freemium model; paid plans start at $100 per month.

What are the best alternatives to dbt?

Community-listed alternatives to dbt include Matillion, Twilio Segment, Estuary Flow, Hevo Data.

Does dbt have a free trial?

Yes, dbt offers a 14-day free trial.

dbt

Transform data in the warehouse with SQL

Freemium · $100Data integration & ETL

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dbt is a data integration & ETL tool for Developers, offered as freemium ($100/mo). Based in United States, founded in 2016. Popular alternatives include Matillion, Twilio Segment, Estuary Flow.

About dbt

dbt (data build tool) is the de facto standard for transforming data inside a cloud warehouse. It is developed by dbt Labs, a company founded in Philadelphia as Fishtown Analytics, which announced a merger with Fivetran in October 2025 and completed it in June 2026. Analysts write SELECT statements as models, and dbt compiles them, works out dependencies, materializes tables and views, runs tests and generates documentation and lineage, with everything stored in git.

dbt Core is open source and runs anywhere with a command line and a scheduler. dbt Cloud, the commercial product renamed the dbt platform in 2025, adds a browser IDE, a job scheduler, CI checks on pull requests, the Semantic Layer for consistent metric definitions, dbt Mesh for governing many projects across teams, and AI assistance for writing and documenting code. Cloud has a free single-developer plan, a per-seat Starter plan with build limits and custom Enterprise pricing for SSO, RBAC and Mesh. It works with Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift, Postgres and many other platforms.

dbt created the analytics engineering role and is the right choice for most teams with a warehouse who want tested, version-controlled transformations. Jinja templating can get messy, large DAGs need orchestration tuning, and Cloud seats add up. SQLMesh, whose developer Tobiko Data was bought by Fivetran in 2025, is the main open-source challenger, Dataform is the option built into Google BigQuery, and Coalesce offers a more visual approach.

Key features of dbt

SQL models with ref() dependencies and DAG
Tests, documentation and lineage graphs
Incremental models, snapshots and seeds
dbt Cloud IDE, scheduler and CI/CD
Semantic Layer for consistent metrics
dbt Mesh for cross-team projects

Pros and cons

Pros

Industry standard with huge community
Brings software engineering practices to analytics
Free open-source core
Integrates with the whole modern data stack

Cons

Cloud pricing per developer seat adds up
Jinja templating can get complex
Long-running DAGs need orchestration tuning
Fivetran merger adds roadmap uncertainty

dbt pricing

dbt uses a freemium model. A 14-day free trial is available.

Plan	Price	Includes
Developer	$0	1 seat, 3,000 models built/mo, 1 project
Starter	$100 / user/mo	5 seats, 15,000 models built/mo, 1 project
Enterprise	Custom	Billed annually; 100,000 models built/mo, 30 projects
Enterprise+	Custom	Unlimited projects

Source: www.getdbt.com · checked on Oct 20, 2026

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How dbt compares in Data integration & ETL

Rank by votes: #1 / 19
Starting price: $100
Free alternatives: 2

dbt ranks #1 of 19 data integration & etl tools by community votes and is priced in line with the category.

Common use cases

1Transforming raw warehouse data into clean marts
2Testing data quality in CI before dashboards break
3Documenting metrics with a semantic layer
4Multi-team data platform with Mesh

Best for

Data teams with a warehouse who want tested, documented, version-controlled transformations.

Not ideal for

Organizations without a warehouse or with only spreadsheet-scale data.

Integrations

Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift
Postgres
Airflow
Dagster
GitHub
Lightdash
Looker

Our take

If you have a warehouse, you need dbt or something like it. Start with Core and a scheduler; buy Cloud when collaboration outgrows the CLI.

FAQ

What is dbt?: dbt is a Data integration & ETL tool: Transform data in the warehouse with SQL.
How much does dbt cost?: dbt uses a Freemium model; paid plans start at $100 per month.
What are the best alternatives to dbt?: Community-listed alternatives to dbt include Matillion, Twilio Segment, Estuary Flow, Hevo Data.
Does dbt have a free trial?: Yes, dbt offers a 14-day free trial.
What does dbt integrate with?: dbt integrates with Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift, Postgres, Airflow and more.
Which platforms does dbt support?: dbt is available on web.
Who is dbt for?: Data teams with a warehouse who want tested, documented, version-controlled transformations.

Alternatives to dbt

See all 10

Matillion
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Cloud ELT and pipeline platform with Maia AI data engineering agents
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checked Oct 20
Twilio Segment
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Customer data platform and event routing
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checked Oct 20
Estuary Flow
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Real-time ETL and CDC pipelines
FreemiumDevelopers
checked Oct 20
Hevo Data
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No-code ELT pipelines that load SaaS and database data to warehouses
Freemium · $299Small businesses
checked Oct 20
Context.dev
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One API for scraping, search, brand data and people search
Freemium · $20Developers
checked Nov 4
Hookdeck
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Event gateway that queues, routes and retries inbound webhooks
Freemium · $39Developers
checked Nov 4

More Data integration & ETL tools

See all 19

Stitch
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Simple ELT for small data teams
Paid · $100Small businesses
checked Oct 20
Census
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Operational analytics from the warehouse
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checked Oct 20
Boomi
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Enterprise iPaaS for integration, APIs, data and AI agents
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checked Oct 20
Fivetran
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Automated data pipelines to your warehouse
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checked Oct 20
Hightouch
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Reverse ETL and composable CDP
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checked Oct 20
Supermetrics
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Marketing data connector for Sheets, Looker Studio and warehouses
PaidAgencies
checked Oct 20

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