dbt Licensing FAQ

The goal of this document is to give maximal clarity under the permitted use of various Open Source, Source Available and Proprietary codebases maintained by dbt Labs. If you have any questions please reach out to license@dbtlabs.com.

Change history

May 28, 2025 - Posted original FAQ.

Announcing the dbt Fusion engine

On May 28, 2025, dbt Labs announced the next-generation dbt Fusion engine, which aims to be faster, more capable, and more efficient than dbt Core.

Is the license for dbt Core changing?

No.

Will dbt Labs continue to support and maintain dbt Core?

Yes.

Do I need to be a paying dbt customer in order to use Fusion?

No.

Do I need to be a paying dbt customer in order to access some enterprise features of Fusion?

Yes.

What is the license for Fusion?

Fusion includes source-available (ELv2), open-source (Apache 2), and proprietary components. You can use only the source-available code if you prefer.

What do I, a dbt Core user, need to know about Fusion?

As long as you aren't offering Fusion as a hosted or managed service to a third party, you should think about using Fusion in almost exactly the same way you think about using dbt Core today.

You can use Fusion internally in your own business, for free and without restriction. This includes providing transformed data to other customers, as long as the transformed data is the product.

Licenses

What licenses does dbt Labs use for its software?

dbt Labs uses different license types for different software offerings:

• Apache 2 is an Open Source software license that permits anyone to use, copy, redistribute, or modify the licensed software — without warranty, conditions, or limitations, aside from the requirement to preserve license notices, attribution, and trademarks.
• Elastic License v2 (ELv2) is a simple, permissive license that gives anyone the right to use, copy, redistribute, or modify the licensed software, with three specific limitations (detailed below). These limitations are designed to support the sustainable business of the software developer and maintainer (dbt Labs).
• Business Source License (BSL) is a source-available license that only allows non-production use. It only applies to MetricFlow. See below for more detail about why MetricFlow is covered by its own license.
• Other software, not governed by an open-source or source-available license, is proprietary to dbt Labs and made available to customers and partners under commercial terms of service. This includes software that is available for free, within usage limits.

Understanding dbt Core and Fusion

Has the license for dbt Core changed?

No. There is no change in license for existing dbt Core software, or future releases of that software.

dbt Core (which includes dbt-core, dbt-common, and dbt-adapters maintained by dbt Labs) is licensed under Apache 2, as it has been since its first release in 2016.

As dbt Labs CEO Tristan Handy wrote in his blog post, dbt Labs will continue maintaining dbt-core under the Apache 2 license indefinitely.

dbt Labs is committed to the ecosystem around dbt Core, and the thousands of users and customers who rely on it for their data work every day.

Is the dbt Fusion engine replacing dbt Core?

No.

The dbt framework includes a language and an engine.

The dbt language, the code you can write in your dbt project, has become a standard for the industry. dbt Labs has developed this language, with contributions and input from the community, in dbt Core over the past decade.

The dbt engine is the foundational technology for compiling dbt projects, executing transformation graphs, and producing metadata. Fusion is the next-generation engine for dbt. It is an entirely new piece of software, written in a different programming language (Rust) than dbt Core (Python). From its very first release, Fusion will be available under Elastic License v2 (ELv2), which means that the vast majority of existing dbt Core users can upgrade to use Fusion as their engine.

dbt Labs is committed to maintaining and continuing to expand the dbt language across both the Core and Fusion engines. You should expect to see new dbt Core versions (v1.11, v1.12, etc) that include support for new language features and fixes to ensure continuity with existing functionality. dbt Labs will also continue to evaluate and integrate external contributions from the community.

The dbt Fusion engine is the foundation for future investment and innovation in the engine of dbt. dbt Labs’ goal is to minimize disruption for existing dbt users, while also supporting as many users as possible in upgrading to use Fusion as their engine for dbt. It will eventually support the full dbt language, and the vast majority of existing dbt projects. We believe that Fusion will provide a superior development and deployment experience for everyone.

You do not need to be a paying dbt customer to use Fusion.

What is Elastic License v2, and why did we choose it?

ELv2 is a permissive license that strikes the balance of providing openness and flexibility for users, while also providing protections for dbt Labs to build a sustainable business as the software’s primary developer and maintainer.

As a user of the dbt Fusion engine, you can do almost anything with the software, except:

• You may not provide Fusion to others as a managed service, unless as part of a separate commercial agreement with dbt Labs
• You may not circumvent Fusion’s “license key” functionality
• You may not remove or obscure any notices about Fusion’s license or the “dbt” (or any other) trademark/copyright when redistributing the software

We believe ELv2 will enable us to live our values by working on Fusion in the open, empowering users to be the advocates of this new engine, and continuing to invest in the ecosystem of open source packages and tools that community members build around the dbt framework.

What’s the difference between Fusion’s public source code and binary distribution?

The dbt Fusion engine is written in Rust, a compiled language. This means that its source code is visible in the dbt-fusion repository, and it is distributed in a compiled binary.

You are welcome to read, compile, and modify the visible source code.

The binary distribution of Fusion also includes some proprietary components for which the source code is not publicly viewable. These components add functionality which may be available to everyone, or available exclusively to paying customers (via license key). The binary form of Fusion is also licensed under ELv2, so it has the same permitted uses and restrictions.

We aim to ensure that, at any point in time, you can compile the source code that is visible in the dbt-fusion repository into a working version of Fusion. We will also maintain up-to-date documentation clarifying which additive functionality is proprietary and not available in the source code.

The dbt language spec and adapter functionality are freely available and do not require a license key.

Which components of the dbt Fusion engine are available under different licenses?

Fusion is licensed under ELv2, except for subdirectories of the dbt-fusion repository which contain their own LICENSE files. These subdirectories containing standalone libraries may serve additional use cases, interact more closely with user-defined code, or serve as standards for the data ecosystem.

Today, this includes dbt-jinja, which is available under an Apache 2 license. In the future, we intend to publish the source code for Fusion adapters (powered by Arrow/ADBC) and SQL grammars/parsers under an Apache 2 license.

Can I use the dbt Fusion engine? Examples

By use case

My team is using dbt to develop, transform, and test data assets in my company's cloud data warehouse. Those data assets are powering real-time dashboards for our colleagues and embedded product experiences for our customers. Is this a permitted use?

Yes, this is permitted. We believe strongly in the “dbt way” of doing analytical work (which we’ve called the ADLC), and we believe that upgrading to Fusion will enable your team to do this work even more effectively.

I'm a contractor or consultant setting up dbt for my clients to use internally. Am I permitted to continue doing this?

Yes, this is permitted under ELv2, because you are not providing Fusion as a hosted or managed service.

I want to use Fusion to transform my customers’ data into assets that power my application. The app shows Fusion data test failures directly to customers, as a way of alerting them to data quality issues in their source data systems. Am I permitted to continue doing this?

Yes, this is permitted under ELv2, because your customers do not have direct control over their access to Fusion.

I’m building a general-purpose data preparation and analytics product. I provide my customers with data transformation workflows that are leveraging Fusion behind-the-scenes. Is this a permitted use?

No, not without a separate commercial agreement with dbt Labs.

If your customers are submitting code, configuration, or other inputs to data transformation workflows in your hosted/managed product that are powered by Fusion, this is not permitted under ELv2 because the service is providing users with access to substantial portions of Fusion’s functionality. It does not matter whether those inputs happen via UI, API, prompts, or otherwise.

If you would like to discuss your specific case, and the possibility of a commercial agreement, please reach out to us at license@dbtlabs.com.

I’m building a data product that provides functionality complementary to dbt. I provide my customers with a dbt integration as part of my hosted/managed service. Is this a permitted use?

It depends.

If your product integrates with documented APIs of Fusion — such as by generating Fusion code to write back to your customers’ project, or by parsing metadata artifacts that your customer provides from their own self-hosted Fusion deployment — this is permitted (and encouraged!). dbt Labs publishes validation schemas and artifact specifications with Apache 2 licenses, which you may freely use as part of building your integration.

If your product integration requires running Fusion commands against customer projects as part of your hosted or managed service, this use is not permitted under ELv2 and requires a separate commercial agreement. Please reach out to us at license@dbtlabs.com.

By deployment pattern

If I am self-hosting Airflow to run dbt Core for my own business today, can I start running Fusion instead?

Yes.

If I am an end user of a hosted/managed service that provides dbt Core to me today, can I expect to immediately upgrade to Fusion?

No. The hosted/managed service provider must negotiate a licensing agreement with dbt Labs in order to provide Fusion as a hosted/managed service to you. In the meantime, you may continue to use dbt Core, or try Fusion on your own.

If I am an end user of a hosted/managed service that provides dbt Core to me today, and I install Fusion in its place, am I in violation of the license?

No. You are the user of a hosted/managed service, not its provider, so you are not in violation of the license.

If you are the provider of a hosted/managed service that might run Fusion, or if you have a different question not answered here, we encourage you to contact us at license@dbtlabs.com.

What is the “license key” within the context of Fusion?

Some proprietary functionality of the Fusion engine is available only to paying customers, and unlocked via license key. Fusion’s license key is implemented via authentication with dbt Labs’ commercial software. By authenticating, users unlock these additional features.

ELv2 prohibits any attempt to circumvent license key functionality, or to remove/obscure Fusion features that are protected by license key.

Does dbt Labs welcome contributions to dbt Core and Fusion?

Yes! dbt Labs maintains all open-source and source-available software projects in public repositories on GitHub (https://github.com/dbt-labs). Anyone can contribute code to any of these projects, including those licensed under ELv2, after signing our Contributor License Agreement.

As always, we value the participation of the community, we will carefully review and evaluate external contributions. We also recognize that valuable contributions come in many forms: opening issues, commenting in discussions, answering questions from other community members, and contributing code to fix bugs or extend functionality.

Why does Fusion have a different license from MetricFlow, which is available under BSL?

In 2021, dbt Labs made the decision to license components of our Semantic Layer offering under the Business Source License (BSL). You can read more about that decision here. After the acquisition of Transform, we used the same BSL license for MetricFlow.

In 2025, we reexamined the state of the art in source-available licenses. ELv2 stood out for its simplicity: it is short, easy to understand, and standard across all the projects which use it. By contrast, BSL allows custom terms and is different in every application.

We hope that ELv2 makes it clear to you if you can use Fusion. If you are still unsure, please contact us at license@dbtlabs.com. We’re also eager to hear any feedback on how we can make this FAQ clearer and more helpful.