cost

dbt-forge cost connects to your data warehouse and estimates the cost of running each dbt model. Use it to find expensive queries and get materialization suggestions that reduce warehouse spend.

Command

dbt-forge cost [--days N] [--top N] [--report] [--target TARGET]

What it does

The command reads connection credentials from profiles.yml, queries warehouse usage metadata, and shows:

• Top N most expensive models ranked by estimated cost
• Total estimated cost across all models
• Materialization suggestions (e.g., switch a hot view to a table)

Options

--days

Number of days of usage history to analyze. Defaults to 30.

dbt-forge cost --days 7

--top

Number of top models to display. Defaults to 10.

dbt-forge cost --top 20

--report

Output a markdown report instead of the Rich table. Useful for sharing or saving.

dbt-forge cost --report
dbt-forge cost --report > cost-report.md

--target

dbt profile target to use for the warehouse connection. Defaults to dev.

dbt-forge cost --target prod

Supported warehouses

Warehouse	Data source	Cost metric
BigQuery	INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS	Bytes billed
Snowflake	SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.QUERY_HISTORY	Credits used
Databricks	system.billing.usage	DBUs consumed

Other adapters (PostgreSQL, DuckDB, Redshift, Trino, Spark) are not yet supported for cost estimation. The command will show a message and exit.

Materialization suggestions

The command analyzes query patterns and suggests materialization changes:

Current	Condition	Suggested	Reason
view	Queried 50+ times	table	High query count indicates the view is recomputed frequently
table	Scans 10+ GB	incremental	Large full-table rebuilds can be replaced with incremental loads
table	Queried fewer than 3 times	view	Rarely queried tables waste storage and rebuild time

Output

Table view (default)

                    dbt-forge cost (last 30 days)
 Model              Bytes Scanned   Exec Count   Est. Cost   Materialization
 fct_orders         12.4 GB         45           $3.20       table
 stg_payments       8.1 GB          120          $2.10       view
 rpt_revenue        5.3 GB          30           $1.40       table

 Total estimated cost: $6.70

 Materialization suggestions:
  stg_payments: view → table (queried 120 times)

Behavior and limits

• Must run from inside an existing dbt project (walks up to find dbt_project.yml).
• Reads connection credentials from profiles.yml using the introspect module.
• Requires appropriate warehouse permissions to query usage metadata tables.
• Cost estimates are approximations based on usage data, not exact billing figures.
• BigQuery cost is estimated at $5/TB scanned (on-demand pricing).
• The command does not modify any warehouse data or dbt project files.