Comparing Prefect Cloud to Open Source
Prefect Cloud merges Pythonic open-source with enterprise features including enhanced scalability, governance, and observability in a secure hybrid platform.
Infrastructure Overhead
Core Capabilities
Self-host and maintain everything yourself
Business Impact
Your engineers spend valuable time managing infrastructure instead of building data products, with increased risk of downtime and outages
Infrastructure Overhead
Core Capabilities
Fully managed orchestration with hybrid flexibility
Business Impact
Free up engineers from maintenance to focus on delivering value
Security & Compliance
Core Capabilities
Patch together security tools manually
Business Impact
Security gaps, compliance challenges, and no built-in user management for controlling access to critical workflows
Security & Compliance
Core Capabilities
Built-in SSO, RBAC, workspace isolation, audit logs
Business Impact
Reduce risk and meet even the strictest security and compliance requirements
Workflow Visibility
Core Capabilities
Basic UI, no aggregated insights
Business Impact
Limited visibility into system-wide performance, making it difficult to identify bottlenecks or understand workflow dependencies
Workflow Visibility
Core Capabilities
Rich dashboards, performance metrics, and workflow lineage
Business Impact
Troubleshoot faster and optimize system-wide performance
Scalability & Performance
Core Capabilities
Prone to bottlenecks and manual tuning
Business Impact
Performance degradation as you scale, with increasingly complex maintenance requirements
Scalability & Performance
Core Capabilities
Dynamic resource scaling with zero-maintenance infrastructure
Business Impact
Confidently scale without firefighting
Total Cost of Ownership
Core Capabilities
Free at first, but costly DevOps and downtime as teams scale
Business Impact
Hidden infrastructure and engineering costs that grow as your workflows expand
Total Cost of Ownership
Core Capabilities
Lower cloud spend and dramatically reduced engineering lift
Business Impact
Ship faster while also saving time and money
Compare Prefect Cloud and Open Source
Hear from Prefect Cloud Users
Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive chose Prefect Cloud to streamline scenario planning for its 70 U.S. auction sites. With Prefect's robust security and scalability, the Cox team automated hundreds of data pipelines.
EF Education First
Prefect Cloud enabled EF Education First, a 10,000-employee travel learning company, to scale data orchestration. This improved workflow management and observability for data analysts and scientists throughout the organization.
