Vendor
Prefect Cloud
Prefect Cloud runs four tiers: Hobby free forever, Starter at $100 / month billed monthly, Team at $100 / user / month billed annually, and Enterprise quoted. The meter is seats and deployments, not task-runs, and each tier carries an allowance of Prefect Serverless managed compute. The Python-flow API is the most Pythonic of the three orchestrators.source - pulled 2026-09-22
Pricing model
Tiered on seats and deployments, not task-runs: Hobby free forever, Starter $100/month billed monthly, Team $100/user/month billed annually, Enterprise quoted. Each tier includes a block of Prefect Serverless managed compute (500 min, 75 hrs, 225 hrs, custom) and scales deployments, automations and API rate limit.
Cheapest published rate: Hobby: free forever, 2 users, 5 deploymentsPrefect Cloud pricing page - pulled 2026-09-22
2026 changes
There is no Pro tier and no $450 rate on the card. The ladder is Hobby free, Starter $100/month, Team $100/user/month billed annually, Enterprise quoted, and the meter is seats and deployments rather than task-runs. Prefect is acquiring Dagster Labs, announced 13 July 2026, and has added Prefect Horizon, a managed MCP platform.
Verified 2026-09-22.
Pricing in detail
Budget from the seat count and the deployment count, because those are what the plans actually cap. Hobby gives 2 users and 5 deployments, Starter 3 users and 20 deployments, Team 4 to 8 users and 100 deployments, Enterprise 5+ users and unlimited deployments. Team is the only tier billed annually; Starter bills monthly.
Managed compute is included rather than metered separately: 500 minutes / month on Hobby, 75 hours on Starter, 225 hours on Team, custom on Enterprise. Bring-your-own compute starts at Starter, which also opens webhooks and lifts the API rate limit from 625 to 1,250 requests / minute.
Enterprise is where governance lands: SSO over SAML or OIDC, SCIM directory sync, object-level RBAC, IP allowlisting, PrivateLink, multiple workspaces and a 99.99% uptime SLA. Audit log retention is 24 hours on Team and custom on Enterprise, so a compliance requirement for longer retention forces the top tier.
Prefect is acquiring Dagster Labs, announced 13 July 2026. Prefect says Dagster and Dagster+ keep their names, licence and roadmap, and that existing deployments, contracts, pricing and support do not change.source - pulled 2026-09-22
When to pick Prefect Cloud
Pick Prefect when the team is Python-first and prefers a Pythonic flow API over Airflow's DAG-as-code or Dagster's asset-graph DSL. The 3.0 transactional model is a real differentiator for write-heavy pipelines.
Avoid Prefect when the team needs the largest ecosystem of community operators (Airflow) or first-class asset-graph semantics (Dagster).
Mid-market estimate
For a 50M-MAR mid-market profile, the published rate produces an estimated subscription line of $800/mo. Team at its published 8-user ceiling: 8 seats at $100/user/month, billed annually, with 225 hours of Prefect Serverless included.source - pulled 2026-09-22Run the full TCO at /tco-calculator.
Related
Written by Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Founder of Digital Signet. Independent reference, no vendor sponsorship.
Sources logged at /sources. Pricing-change history at /changelog. Last reviewed 2026-09-22.