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Elementary comes in two offerings: an open-source package you host yourself, and a fully managed cloud platform. Which one fits depends on your goals, scale, and team setup. Elementary OSS A self-maintained, open-source CLI that integrates with your dbt project and the Elementary dbt package. It covers a single dbt project with dbt test results, table-level lineage, test coverage, and basic alerting, all through the self-hosted Elementary observability report. Elementary Cloud A fully managed platform for data observability, quality, and governance, with no infrastructure to maintain. It covers many dbt projects end to end, from ingestion to BI and AI consumption, with column-level lineage, ML-powered detection, governance, and enterprise security built in. All of these signals feed the context engine that powers the Elementary AI agents and MCP. The agents work in the background while you supervise, and help you work at scale: they recommend tests, triage and resolve incidents, enrich governance metadata, and optimize costly models and tests. Through the MCP, the Elementary context is provided to other agents, like analytics and code agents, so they return more accurate results on trustworthy data.
Elementary is code-first. Tests, monitors, and configuration live in your dbt project and code repository, not locked inside a vendor UI. OSS and Cloud share the same foundation, so there is no vendor lock-in.

Not sure which one fits?

If you’re trying to decide what would work best, feel free to talk to the team.
Below is a detailed comparison between the OSS and Cloud features:
FeatureOSSCloud
AI agents & MCP
  • No AI
Coverage
  • Single dbt project and its warehouse
  • Multiple dbt projects
  • End to end, from ingestion (Fivetran, SAP, and more) through the warehouse and dbt to BI and AI consumption
Data lineage
  • Table-level lineage
Detection
  • dbt tests and anomaly detection tests (freshness, volume)
Test coverage
  • Test results in the self-hosted report
Triage & Response
  • Basic Slack and Teams alerts
Performance & cost
  • Model and test performance
GovernanceX
Enabling non-technical usersX
Security & privacy
  • Fully self-hosted, your data and metadata stay in your environment

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Frequently asked questions

Elementary OSS is an open-source CLI and dbt package that you host yourself. It covers a single dbt project with dbt test results, table-level lineage, test coverage, and basic alerting. Elementary Cloud is a fully managed platform that adds ML-powered anomaly detection, column-level lineage up to BI, incident management, governance, enterprise security, and a team of AI agents you put to work at scale, across multiple dbt projects, with no infrastructure to maintain.
Yes. Elementary OSS is open source and free to use. You install the dbt package and CLI in your own environment and run the observability report yourself.
Yes. You can start a free Elementary Cloud trial at app.elementary-data.com. If you’re not sure whether OSS or Cloud fits your setup, you can also talk to the team.
Yes. Cloud builds on the same open-source foundation and includes the OSS capabilities, then adds automated detection, lineage, governance, security, and AI agents on top.
Yes. Cloud uses the same Elementary dbt package, so moving from OSS to Cloud means connecting your existing dbt project rather than starting over. See the dbt package quickstart.
No. Elementary is code-first. Your tests, monitors, and configuration live in your dbt project and code repository, not inside a vendor UI, so you keep full ownership and can move between OSS and Cloud freely.
Elementary Cloud is SOC 2 Type II certified and HIPAA compliant. It collects metadata, logs, and aggregated metrics only, with no read access to raw data in your warehouse. It supports RBAC, SSO, audit logs, and PrivateLink. See security and privacy for details.
Choose OSS for a free, self-hosted package on a single dbt project. Choose Cloud to cover multiple projects end to end with automated detection, governance, enterprise security, and AI agents you supervise at scale, without managing infrastructure. Still unsure? Talk to the team and we’ll help you decide.

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