Databricks Pricing 2026
Complete pricing guide with plans, hidden costs, and negotiation tips
Databricks pricing varies by team size and features, ranging from $0 to $0.4 per month in 2026. Your actual cost depends on the tier you choose, contract length, and negotiated discounts.
Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.
- Free tier: Yes
- Billing: Monthly and annual (save 15-20%)
- Hidden costs: Add ~35% for implementation, support, and training
Databricks offers 4 pricing tiers: Free Trial, Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, AI/ML. Standard paid plans include Free Trial at $0/month. The Data Engineering plan is data engineering.
Compared to other data warehousing software, Databricks is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.
Databricks is a unified analytics platform built around the lakehouse architecture, combining the best of data warehouses and data lakes. Founded by the creators of Apache Spark, Databricks offers data engineering, data science, machine learning, and SQL analytics capabilities. The platform uses Databricks Units (DBUs) as its billing currency, with rates varying by edition (Standard, Premium, Enterprise) and workload type.
Databricks pricing starts at approximately $0.15/DBU for jobs compute on the Standard tier, scaling up to $0.65+/DBU for Enterprise all-purpose compute. However, total costs include both DBU charges and separate cloud infrastructure fees, which often equal or exceed the Databricks platform cost itself. A typical mid-size team can expect to spend $2,000-$5,000 per month on Databricks alone, with total infrastructure costs reaching $4,000-$15,000 monthly.
All Databricks Plans & Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | Free | Free 0 | Getting started |
| Data Engineering billing: per DBU | Contact | Contact | Data engineering |
| Data Warehousing billing: per DBU | Contact | Contact | Analytics |
| AI/ML billing: per DBU | Contact | Contact | AI applications |
View all features by plan
Free Trial
- Free tier available
Data Engineering
- Data processing pipelines
Data Warehousing
- SQL queries and analytics
AI/ML
- GenAI and ML workloads
Get a custom Databricks quote
Enter your work email and we'll send you a detailed cost breakdown.
Frequently Asked Questions
01 How much does Databricks cost?
Databricks pricing ranges from $0.07/DBU to $0.65+/DBU depending on the edition and workload type, plus separate cloud infrastructure costs. Most teams spend $500-$5,000+ per month. Total costs including cloud infrastructure are typically 2-3x the DBU charges alone.
02 What is a Databricks DBU?
A Databricks Unit (DBU) is a unit of processing capability per hour, billed per second. Different VM sizes consume different numbers of DBUs per hour. For example, an m5.xlarge instance on AWS consumes 0.69 DBUs per hour, while an r5.4xlarge consumes 3.6 DBUs per hour.
03 Does Databricks have a free tier?
Databricks offers a 14-day free trial with limited credits but does not have a permanent free tier. The open-source components (Apache Spark, Delta Lake) are free to use independently, but the managed Databricks platform requires a paid subscription.
04 What is the difference between Databricks Standard and Premium?
Premium costs approximately 37% more per DBU than Standard but includes role-based access control, Unity Catalog for data governance, audit logging, and SQL Serverless warehouses. Standard provides core data engineering and ML features. Note: Azure Databricks Standard tier is being retired in October 2026.
05 How can I reduce Databricks costs?
Key strategies include: using Jobs Compute instead of All-Purpose Compute (up to 4x cheaper), leveraging spot instances for non-critical workloads, setting auto-terminate on idle clusters, right-sizing VM instances, and committing to 1-3 year plans for up to 37% DBU discounts.
06 Does Databricks pricing include cloud infrastructure?
No, Databricks charges DBU fees separately from cloud infrastructure costs. You pay Databricks for the platform and your cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP) for VMs, storage, and networking. Cloud costs often equal or exceed DBU charges, so budget 2-3x your estimated DBU spend for total costs.