Costs
Part of Customer data platforms: durable identity models anchor every build
How customer data platforms are priced, tier by tier
Customer data platforms pricing for 2027 compares Salesforce Data 360's credit and profile models with Adobe Real-Time CDP's profile-volume packaging and full cost.
What to take away
- Salesforce Data 360 publishes three ratesFlex Credits at $500 per 100,000 credits, Profiles at $240 per 1,000 profiles per year, and Enterprise Profiles at $420 per 1,000 profiles per year.
- Adobe Real-Time CDP is sold as B2C, B2B and B2P editions priced by profile volume, with no published rate.
- License fees are usually the smaller half of a three-year total. Implementation, cloud processing, administration and exit work decide the rest.
- Get every finalist to price the same profile and workload sheet, with written definitions, overage rules and price-change notice.
Customer data platforms pricing combines published units, custom quotes, cloud costs and internal operation. These figures were checked on September 1, 2026.
Pricing units that decide the bill
Vendors charge by profiles, monthly tracked users, events, rows, credits, storage, ingestion, identity resolution, audience refreshes, streaming, destinations, syncs, seats, environments and modules. Two vendors can use the same word for different things.
Pricing meters to define
- Profiles and monthly tracked users
- Events, rows, and credits
- Storage and ingestion
- Transformations and identity resolution
- Queries and audience refreshes
- Streaming, destinations, and syncs
- Messages, seats, environments, modules
Define each meter in the contract. Estimate ordinary, peak, retry, backfill, deletion, test and growth volumes instead of multiplying one average month. Consent and deletion work carries a cost too. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner's PIPEDA guidance sets out the Canadian obligations behind every suppression and deletion request.
Salesforce Data 360, tier by tier
Salesforce's Data 360 pricing page publishes three models with different included and chargeable actions: Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000, Profiles at $240 per 1,000 profiles per year, and Enterprise Profiles at $420 per 1,000 profiles per year.
Salesforce Data 360 list prices
- 500Flex Credits per 100,000
- 240Profiles per 1,000 per year
- 420Enterprise Profiles per 1,000 per year
| Model | Published list rate | Where it tends to fit | Confirm before signing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flex Credits | $500 per 100,000 credits | Usage-led or spiky workloads with a small profile base | Which actions consume credits, multipliers, expiry, minimum spend |
| Profiles | $240 per 1,000 profiles per year | A steady base of known customers | Profile definition, duplicates, inactive profiles, storage |
| Enterprise Profiles | $420 per 1,000 profiles per year | Larger bases needing the wider action set | Included versus chargeable actions, overage rate, streaming |
Treat these as dated list prices. Ask for the current rate card, the minimum annual commitment, the overage rate and the notice period for price changes.
Adobe Real-Time CDP editions and the missing list price
Adobe's Real-Time CDP pricing page lists B2C, B2B and B2P edition families and says pricing is determined by profile volume. It then sends buyers to request custom pricing.
So there is no Adobe list rate to place beside the Salesforce table. The tier exists only in a quote. Ask for the profile bands, the per-band rate, and the count rule for known, pseudonymous, account, duplicate and inactive profiles.
Connectors, environments, data volumes, support levels and related Adobe products often arrive as separate lines. Reading the customer data platforms compared feature breakdown first tells you which gaps are worth paying to close.
Adobe's page states that pricing depends on profile volume. That sentence is the tier structure. Your job is to get the bands and the counting rule in writing.
Example: three years on published list rates
Take a build with 1,000,000 profiles. On Enterprise Profiles the list rate gives $420,000 a year, so $1,260,000 over three years. On Profiles the same count gives $240,000 a year, or $720,000 over three years.
The gap is $540,000. That is the budget available for implementation, cloud processing and administration, and it is why the two tiers are not interchangeable. The marketing workflow automation pricing tier table counts the same outside-the-license hours.
| Line | Basis | Year 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Profiles | 1,000,000 profiles at $420 per 1,000 | $420,000 |
| Profiles | 1,000,000 profiles at $240 per 1,000 | $240,000 |
| Flex Credits | 20,000,000 credits at $500 per 100,000 | $100,000 |
| Implementation, cloud, admin, exit | From your quote and payroll | Your figure |
Growth changes the answer. Rerun the sheet at your year-three profile count, then compare the total with a return on investment figure you can name. Budget for the end as well. Common data migration problems, export formats and parallel-run costs are pricing lines, not afterthoughts.
Which tier fits which company
With a small base of known profiles and spiky usage, a credit model usually keeps the floor low, provided the multipliers are written down.
A stable base in the hundreds of thousands with steady activation fits annual profile pricing, because the invoice becomes predictable.
Multi-brand groups and account-based B2B teams should compare Enterprise Profiles with Adobe's B2B edition on one volume sheet. Decide which parts of the evaluation deserve your time with this guide to choosing a customer data platform.
