How much does Databricks Unity Catalog cost?
- Free plan
- Yes
- Free trial
- Free trial with access to the platform; some trials include credits and the trial ends…
In your favor
- Free plan. Community Edition is a free, limited functionality platform for learning Spark; a Free Edition for learning data and AI tools is also listed
- No setup fee. no up-front costs
How you buy and get started
- Sign up
- Free signup, no credit card required "Get started with Databricks for free. No credit card required."
- Setup
- Not stated
- When sales steps in
- Not stated
- Support
- Technical support offered; contact sales for details "We do offer technical support."
What Databricks Unity Catalog does
Databricks unifies data, analytics and AI on one platform, with Unity Catalog for governing data, models, dashboards and agents. Pricing is pay-as-you-go by compute usage, with committed use contracts available.
- Good for
- Organizations that want to run data, analytics and AI workloads on one platform and govern them in one place.
- Main product
- Databricks Data + AI Platform (with Unity Catalog governance and Unity Gateway)
- Also includes
- Unity Catalog governance for data, models, dashboards and agents, Unity Gateway: unified access, cost control, observability and guardrails for enterprise AI, Lakebase serverless Postgres, Agent Bricks for building AI agents, AI/BI and Genie, Lakeflow data pipelines
- Connects to
- AWS, Azure, GCP
- Public API
- Not stated
- MCP server
- Not stated
- AI system inventoryNot stated
- AI risk assessmentsNot stated
- EU AI Act, NIST, ISO mappingNot stated
- Policy and approval workflowsNot stated
- Model monitoring and driftNot stated
- Bias and fairness testingNot stated
- Shadow AI discoveryNot stated
- Audit-ready reportingNot stated
The same 8 checks appear on every tool in AI governance tools. Each tick quotes the vendor's own site.
Security and your data
| Question | Their answer | Where it says so |
|---|---|---|
| Trains AI on your data? | Not stated | |
| HIPAA (signs a BAA) | Not stated | |
| SOC 2 | Not stated | |
| GDPR | Not stated | |
| CCPA | Not stated | |
| PCI | Not stated | |
| ISO 27001 | Not stated | |
| Single sign-on | Not stated | |
| Trust center | Trust Center available | "[Trust Center](https://www.databricks.com/trust)"privacy |
Security answers are the vendor's own claims, quoted. We don't audit them.
Every plan
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | Included | Over the allowance | Where it says so |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | – | – | – | – | "Databricks offers you a pay-as-you-go approach with no up-front costs. Only pay for the pr" |
| Committed Use Contracts | Quote | – | – | – | "Databricks offers you opportunities to access discounts and other benefits when you commit" |
Free plan: Community Edition is a free, limited functionality platform for learning Spark; a Free Edition for learning data and AI tools is also listed
Fine print
- Billing increment
- per second "Only pay for the products you use at per second granularity."
- Billed beyond usage
- Not stated
- Contract
- Committed use contracts offer discounts for usage commitments "The larger your usage commitments, the greater your benefits, including options to flexibly use commitments across multiple clouds."
- Refunds
- Not stated
- Auto renew
- After trial, automatically subscribed to the plan used during the trial "At the end of the trial, you are automatically subscribed to the plan that you have been using during the trial."
- Price change notice
- Not stated
"Not stated" means we read their pricing page and terms and they don't say.
About the company
- Legal name
- Databricks, Inc.
- Address
- 160 Spear Street, 15th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105
- Online since
- Jul 13, 2011 Domain registration date
- Customers
- "Over 20,000 customers across the globe; over 60% of the Fortune 500" their claim
Databricks Unity Catalog alternatives
Superwise
Arize AI
Decube
Airia
Atlan
BigID
Collibra AI Governance
Credo AIReviews elsewhere
We link to reviews instead of copying ratings: those sites don't allow reuse, and we don't test products ourselves.
Questions
Is Databricks Unity Catalog free?
Yes. Community Edition is a free, limited functionality platform for learning Spark; a Free Edition for learning data and AI tools is also listed