Firebolt pricing guide details
Pricing Overview
You can run Firebolt three ways. Firebolt Core is a free self-hosted edition whose repository uses Elastic License 2.0. The license restricts offering the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service exposing a substantial set of its functionality; check those conditions for your intended use. Firebolt also sells a managed service and a bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) option.
The managed service bills compute per second by engine node, not per user and not in FBUs. The pricing page's example engine is one Small (S) compute-optimized node at $0.92 per hour in US East (N. Virginia), about $672 per month if it runs all month. Storage is pass-through object storage at $0.0264 per GB per month, charged on the compressed size of your data. The pricing page lists $200 in free credits.
The calculator offers six regions, node sizes S to XL, a node count, and compute- or storage-optimized hardware. We quote only the Small compute-optimized rate in US East and the storage rate.
Plan Comparison
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| Option | Price | What you get | What you manage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted (Core) | $0 software | Full engine; single binary, Docker, Helm or Kubernetes operator | Hardware, upgrades, uptime |
| Managed service | $0.92 per hour for one Small node (US East), billed per second; storage $0.0264 per GB per month | Auto start and stop, auto scaling, scale to zero, online upgrades, audit logs, SOC2, ISO 27001, ISO 27018 and HIPAA | Engine size and run time |
| Bring your own cloud (BYOC) | No price published | Firebolt in your own cloud account | Your cloud account |
| Free credits | $200 | Credits for the managed service | Nothing extra |
The $200 credit buys about 217 hours of the Small node ($200 / $0.92), which is about nine days of continuous running, or just over four weeks at 10 hours a day, five days a week. That is enough to test query speed on a real dataset.
Hidden Costs and Considerations
- Idle time is the main cost. Billing is per second and engines can stop automatically, but an engine left running costs the same at 3 a.m. as at noon. Turn on auto-stop for anything that is not serving live traffic.
- Hardware choice changes the rate. Storage-optimized nodes and larger sizes (M, L, XL) have their own hourly rates on the calculator. We verified only the Small compute-optimized rate, so price the exact engine you plan to run.
- Region matters. Our figures are for US East (N. Virginia). Check the calculator for the other five regions.
- Self-hosting is not free to run. The licence costs nothing, but you carry the servers, storage and engineering time.
- No published BYOC price. You need a conversation with Firebolt to price it.
Cost Estimates by Team Size
Firebolt does not charge per seat, so these scenarios are sized by engine hours. All use one Small compute-optimized node in US East and 1 TB (1,024 GB) of compressed data.
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| Scenario | Compute | Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Solo developer: 4 hours a day, 22 days | 88 hours x $0.92 = $80.96 | 1,024 GB x $0.0264 = $27.03 |
| Team of 5: 10 hours a day, 22 days | 220 hours x $0.92 = $202.40 | 1,024 GB x $0.0264 = $27.03 |
| Team of 20: always on, 730 hours | 730 hours x $0.92 = $671.60 | 1,024 GB x $0.0264 = $27.03 |
Monthly totals:
- Solo developer: $80.96 + $27.03 = $107.99
- Team of 5: $202.40 + $27.03 = $229.43
- Team of 20: $671.60 + $27.03 = $698.63, which the pricing page rounds to $699
Engine hours, not headcount, drive the bill, so auto-stop matters more than team size.
How Firebolt Pricing Compares
All three alternatives also bill by usage; their figures come from their own pricing pages.
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| Tool | Compute basis | Storage | Free start |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firebolt | $0.92 per hour per Small node | $0.0264 per GB per month | $200 credits; free Core self-host |
| ClickHouse | Per compute-unit-hour (Basic, Scale, Enterprise tiers) | $25.30 per TB per month | $300 credits over 30 days; open source |
| Snowflake | $2.00 per credit (Standard), $3.00 (Enterprise), $4.00 (Business Critical), AWS US East | $23.00 per TB per month | Not quoted |
| Google BigQuery | $6.25 per TiB scanned on demand | $0.02 per GiB per month (active logical) | First 1 TiB of queries free each month |
Firebolt storage works out to about $27 per TB per month (1,024 GB x $0.0264), close to Snowflake's $23.00 and ClickHouse's $25.30. The real difference is compute: Firebolt and ClickHouse price hardware time, Snowflake prices credits and BigQuery prices data scanned. For a steady dashboard workload, a fixed Firebolt engine is easy to forecast. For rare, ad-hoc queries, BigQuery's per-TiB model can cost less because nothing runs between queries.