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Topic

MAR pricing explained

MAR (Monthly Active Rows) counts unique primary-key rows that changed within a billing month. An UPDATE on the same row counts once for the month, not per mutation. INSERTs and DELETEs each count once. Wide tables do not cost more than narrow tables at the same cardinality. Fivetran uses MAR; Airbyte moved away from it to $/GB; Hevo uses events; Stitch uses straight row counts.source - pulled 2026-06-21

Why MAR vs events vs rows vs GB matters

The same source workload produces wildly different bills under each pricing scheme. A CDC stream of 1M mutations on the same 1,000 rows: MAR counts 1,000, events count 1M, rows count up to 1M (vendor-dependent), GB counts whatever the wire-level throughput was. Pick a scheme that aligns with the workload shape:

  • › Wide-and-batched (warehouse dumps): MAR or row tiers.
  • › Narrow-and-frequent (event streams): $/GB or events with discipline.
  • › CDC-heavy: $/GB on Estuary, MAR on Fivetran Premium.
  • › Long-tail SaaS with low row counts: flat per-connector (Portable).

FAQ

What does MAR actually count?

MAR counts unique primary-key rows that changed within a calendar month. An UPDATE on the same row counts once for the month, not per mutation. INSERTs and DELETEs each count once. Rows that did not change do not count.

How does MAR differ from event pricing or $/GB pricing?

MAR counts unique rows changed. Event pricing counts each mutation (so 10 updates on the same row count 10). $/GB counts bytes moved. The same workload produces wildly different bills under each scheme.

Why does my MAR forecast keep being wrong?

MAR depends on the source change-rate, which is hard to predict from row counts. Workloads with high turnover (frequent UPSERTs) hit MAR ceilings earlier than naive math suggests. Run a real pipeline for two weeks to measure before forecasting.

Related

Written by Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Founder of Digital Signet. Independent reference, no vendor sponsorship.

Sources logged at /sources. Pricing-change history at /changelog. Last reviewed 2026-06-21.