Databricks charges per DBU, a unit of processing power, and classic compute adds a separate cloud bill. Pick a company like yours or enter your own numbers for a monthly estimate at list price.
Start from a company like yours
Example numbers: BI through the working day, nightly pipelines and a small data team.
Estimated monthly bill at list price
$3,019
5,040 DBUs a month on Premium, plus 5 TB in default storage.
More usage moves this bill
Databricks charges for DBUs, with no seat fee on compute. More people only cost more if they keep warehouses and notebooks running longer.
A classic m5.xlarge worker uses 0.69 DBUs an hour.
Leave at 0 if your data sits in your own cloud storage.
What would change the bill
Which plan fits
Premium fits unless you need the Enhanced Security and Compliance add-on, which needs Enterprise. Enterprise would make this estimate $3,403 before the add-on.
What this assumes
Left out of this estimate
Rates from: Databricks Lakehouse pricing, Lakeflow Jobs pricing, Compute for Data Science pricing, Databricks pricing calculator, Databricks storage pricing
Comparing warehouses? Open the Snowflake cost calculator
Estimates at list price, for planning only. Your quote and invoice can differ. Runs in your browser with no sign-up. We record that the tool was used, never your numbers. A copied link carries them, so share it only with people you’d show them to.
You pay per DBU, at a rate set by the product and plan. Serverless rates include the cloud compute, while classic rates don’t, so AWS bills you separately for the machines. On Premium in AWS US East, Jobs Serverless is $0.35 a DBU and SQL Serverless is $0.70.
These are worked examples at list price, one per company type, using the example numbers shown. They aren’t client results. DBUs for pipelines and notebooks are the hardest part to guess, so treat each row as a starting point and replace it with numbers from a few real jobs.
| Company and example numbers | Monthly estimate |
|---|---|
| 5-person startupA small warehouse for two hours a day, one short pipeline and light notebook use. | $259.60 |
| 20-person seed SaaSA daily product data pipeline and an analyst in notebooks most days. | $839.00 |
| 50 to 100 person B2B SaaSBI through the working day, nightly pipelines and a small data team. | $3,019 |
| 200 to 500 person companySeveral teams on one warehouse, with bigger pipelines and more notebooks. | $12,330 |
| Enterprise, 1,000+ usersEnterprise plan, long pipeline windows and many people in notebooks. | $54,040 |
| Mobile app, 1M monthly usersFew analysts, but event pipelines running half the day. | $6,796 |
A hypothetical 50 to 100 person B2B SaaS company uses serverless on Premium. A Small SQL warehouse runs 6 hours a day, pipelines use 16 DBUs an hour for 4 hours, notebooks use 8 DBUs an hour for 4 hours, and it keeps 5 TB in default storage.
The estimate is $3,019 a month at list price. Serverless rates include the compute, so there’s no separate bill for the machines, though data transfer can still cost extra.
On Premium in AWS US East, SQL Serverless is $0.70 a DBU, Jobs Serverless $0.35 and Interactive Serverless $0.75, all with compute included. Classic rates are lower, from $0.15, but your cloud provider bills the machines separately. Enterprise costs more on most lines. Databricks’ calculator lists DBUs per hour.
| Rate, AWS US East | Premium / Enterprise |
|---|---|
| SQL ServerlessCompute included. Databricks | $0.70 / $0.70 |
| SQL ProPlus your cloud bill. Databricks | $0.55 / $0.55 |
| SQL ClassicPlus your cloud bill. Databricks | $0.22 / $0.22 |
| Jobs ServerlessCompute included. Databricks | $0.35 / $0.45 |
| Jobs ClassicPlus your cloud bill. Databricks | $0.15 / $0.20 |
| Serverless notebooksCompute included. Databricks | $0.75 / $0.95 |
| All-purpose classic clustersPlus your cloud bill. Databricks | $0.55 / $0.65 |
| Small SQL warehouseDatabricks | 12 DBUs/hour |
| Medium SQL warehouseDatabricks | 24 DBUs/hour |
| Default storage per GB a monthDatabricks | $0.023 |
All rates are per DBU unless marked, and every rate is a pay-as-you-go list price. Azure Databricks prices are set by Microsoft.
Databricks has no seat fee on compute, so a new user costs nothing by themselves. Costs rise when people keep SQL warehouses or notebooks running for longer. Genie is the exception to watch: each user gets a free monthly allowance, and heavy use past it is charged per DBU.
A DBU, or Databricks Unit, is a normalized measure of processing power used for pricing. Each compute type burns DBUs at its own rate. A classic m5.xlarge worker uses 0.69 DBUs an hour, while a Small SQL warehouse uses 12 DBUs an hour. Your bill is DBUs times the rate for that product.
Compute that stays on. An all-purpose cluster or SQL warehouse left running keeps burning DBUs, and a bigger warehouse burns them faster. On classic compute you also keep paying your cloud provider for the machines. Running a production job on all-purpose compute costs more per DBU than running it as a job.
You can’t pick a cluster size on serverless jobs, so a guess only gets you so far. Databricks’ advice is to run a few typical workloads on serverless and measure the DBUs they use. Multiply that by how often each job runs, then put the hourly figure into this calculator.
New workspaces choose Premium or Enterprise. Databricks has announced end of life for Standard, with workspaces upgraded to Premium from 1 October 2025 on AWS and Google Cloud, and from 1 October 2026 on Azure. If an older quote mentions Standard, ask for a new price before you compare it with this estimate.
Choosing between warehouses? Our data warehouse and CDP work covers the setup and the pipelines at a fixed price.
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