Pricing Overview
Snowplow uses a usage-based pricing model built around three distinct tiers that scale from self-managed open-source deployments to fully managed enterprise solutions. The open-source edition is free to deploy and manage on your own infrastructure, giving data engineering teams full control over their event data pipeline. For teams that prefer a managed SaaS experience, BDP Cloud starts at $800 per month after a 14-day trial, supporting up to 80 million monthly events with multi-region deployment. BDP Enterprise, designed for organizations powering data applications across the business, uses event-based pricing tailored to volume, hosting preferences, and the number of destinations. Enterprise customers choose from three sub-tiers: Basecamp, Ascent, and Summit, each adding progressively more advanced capabilities.
Plan Comparison
Snowplow's three plans target very different use cases, from hands-on data engineers comfortable managing infrastructure to large product teams that need turnkey data delivery at scale.
| Feature | Open Source (Self-hosted) | BDP Cloud | BDP Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | From $800/month | Event-based pricing |
| Monthly Event Limit | Unlimited (self-managed) | Up to 80M events | No event limit |
| Hosting | Your infrastructure | Snowplow-hosted SaaS | Hosted in your cloud |
| Data Destinations | Your storage destination | Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift | Redshift, BigQuery, S3, GCS, Kinesis, Pub/Sub, and more |
| Trackers | Community-supported | 15+ trackers | 15+ trackers |
| Data Management | Self-managed data plane | Managed pipeline | Advanced data management interface |
| Multi-Region | Manual setup | Included | Included |
| Cross-Team Support | Community only | Standard support | Dedicated help managing data across teams |
| Trial | N/A | 14-day free trial | Demo available |
The jump from Open Source to BDP Cloud is significant: $800 per month buys a fully managed pipeline with multi-region deployment, eliminating the operational overhead of running Snowplow infrastructure yourself. BDP Enterprise removes the 80 million event cap and unlocks streaming to a wider array of destinations including BigQuery, S3, GCS, Kinesis, and Pub/Sub.
Hidden Costs and Considerations
The Open Source plan carries no licensing fees, but self-hosting requires dedicated engineering effort for infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, upgrades, and scaling. Cloud infrastructure costs on AWS, GCP, or Azure add up depending on event volume and storage needs. BDP Cloud caps events at 80 million per month; exceeding that limit requires upgrading to the Enterprise tier with custom event-based pricing. BDP Enterprise pricing depends on monthly event volume, hosting preferences, consumption patterns, and the number of destinations, so costs vary widely across deployments.
How Snowplow Pricing Compares
Snowplow operates in the data quality and analytics infrastructure space, where pricing models vary from per-seat licensing to usage-based tiers. Here is how Snowplow stacks up against alternatives in the same category.
| Tool | Pricing Model | Starting Price | Free Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snowplow | Usage-based | $800/month (BDP Cloud) | Open Source (self-hosted) |
| Alation | Enterprise | $16,500/month | No |
| Secoda | Freemium | $99/month (Premium) | Yes (1 editor, 500 resources) |
| Metaplane | Freemium | $25/month (Pro) | Yes (1 user) |
Snowplow's $800 per month entry point for BDP Cloud positions it well below Alation's $16,500 monthly base license, though the two platforms serve different primary use cases. Compared to lighter-weight tools like Secoda at $99 per month and Metaplane at $25 per month, Snowplow commands a premium that reflects its real-time event streaming architecture, custom schema validation, and the depth of its data pipeline capabilities. Teams already running open-source Snowplow can evaluate BDP Cloud through a 14-day trial before committing to the $800 per month managed tier.