Cloudera pricing & licensing updates

Latest update:  March 2025 

Licensing

Subscription for binary access

A subscription is required for all Cloudera software version releases including software binaries, maintenance and security releases, and new product releases.  Customers and developers will be able to access our products with a subscription agreement with Cloudera.

What’s included in a subscription

World-class technical support for a start. More importantly, access to an enterprise platform for data, analytics, and AI, built by bringing together 50+ open source software projects with proprietary technologies and enhancements, that is integrated, tested, optimized, and hardened for enterprise scale, security, and reliability. In addition to support and binary access, a subscription entitles a customer to version upgrades, maintenance releases, bug fixes, and security patches.

Pricing

Cloudera pricing

Pricing for both Cloudera on cloud (formerly Cloudera Public Cloud) services and Cloudera on premises (Cloudera Private Cloud) software is Compute-Based and Data-Based, following industry standards for cloud data management and analytics.

Cloudera on premises overview

Cloudera on premises consists of two products; Cloudera Base on premises and Cloudera Data Services on premises. 

Cloudera simplified the acquisition of our Data Services on premises - Data Warehouse, AI, and Data Engineering service. Cloudera Data Services on premises is charged on a compute-only basis.  Cloudera Data Services on premises also relies on Cloudera Base on premises for separated Storage, Data Management, and Shared Data Experience. 

As of February 2025, Cloudera simplified the pricing structure for the deployment of its platform in the data center. For Cloudera Base on premises and Cloudera Streaming pricing is now based on Compute and Data Under Management. There is no impact for customers using Cloudera on cloud. Our pricing for both Cloudera on premises products is designed to be market competitive and aligned with modern cloud-based data analytics pricing (compute and data-based). 

The monetization updates to Cloudera Base on premises and Cloudera Streaming more accurately and fairly price based on total capacity usage of the product. Instead of pricing based on nodes, where capacity can vary significantly, the Compute and Data Under Management model reflects unique hardware configuration capacities. These updates create simpler pricing that more closely aligns our price model with industry standards for cloud and enterprise software companies.

The definition of Compute remains the same, accounting for collection, enrichment, reporting, serving, and predicting capabilities on Cloudera software. Data Under Management captures the value customers derive from maintaining data on the Cloudera Platform (e.g. security and governance to support compute functions). 

Your Cloudera Account Executive will work with you to explain any impact of the updated pricing. 

How does Cloudera GPU Unit “CGU” pricing work?

This pricing metric, called Cloudera GPU Unit (CGU) is determined by the type and amount of GPU cards deployed on the server estate. Please refer to the CGU tables for more information. CGU is the way we license and price GPU Acceleration.

CGU only applies to Cloudera Base on premises, Cloudera Data Services on premises, and Cloudera Data Science Workbench.

Cloudera on cloud pricing

Each Cloudera service—currently Data Engineering, Data Flow, Data Hub, Data Warehouse, Flow Management on Data Hub, AI, and Operational Database—has discrete rates ($0.XX/hr) for the instance or node types supported by each service that is derived by a published Cloudera Compute Unit (CCUs) per hour and CCU rate per hour.  The number of CCUs per instance is calculated as the sum of the number of cores divided by six plus the amount of memory (in GB) divided by 12.  The CCU calculation is the same regardless of on premises or on cloud. For Data Hub and AI, we additionally provide instances that are based on GPUs which are considered in the derived instance rate per hour.  Pricing is “per instance per hour” or “per node per hour” based on the type of service. 

For Data Flow Functions, they are charged per Billable Invocation, a combination of function invocations and function duration. As you use each of the Cloudera on cloud services, you are charged for the services that you use. Please see the rate tables and terms on the pricing page for more details.

Buying Cloudera on cloud

There are two ways to buy—Pay-as-You-Go and Cloud Credits. With either option, you can use any Cloudera service at any time. You do not commit to a specific “SKU” or set of SKUs. You have total flexibility when using any Cloudera service. With the Pay-as-You-Go option, you are billed monthly based on your use and pay based on the published rates. With Cloud Credits, you buy a number of Cloud Credits that you use over a 12-month period.  The more Cloud Credits you purchase, the more that you will save. Any Cloud Credits not used at the end of the 12-month period are forfeited unless you renew, in which case a portion of your unused credits can be rolled over. For more details, please see the rate tables and terms on the pricing page.