@kapa.ai how can I predict the cost of a source without knowing first how much data will I move?

Airbyte’s docs don’t provide a way to precisely predict source cost without already knowing (or estimating) how much data you’ll move. I’ll outline what is documented and where the gaps are. 1. What Airbyte measures as “volume moved” For volume-based pricing in Airbyte Cloud, the platform measures data volume as it flows through Airbyte in its internal protocol format, not as stored in your database. This representation is usually larger than what you see when you query the DB directly. [[Connection timeline](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/cloud/managing-airbyte-cloud/review-connection-timeline#syncs-refreshes-and-clears)] > “Airbyte measures data volume observed by the Airbyte Platform during the sync… serialized in the Airbyte Protocol format. This is likely to be a larger representation of your data than you would see if you were to query your database directly.” [[Connection timeline](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/cloud/managing-airbyte-cloud/review-connection-timeline#syncs-refreshes-and-clears)] This means you can’t just take the raw table size from the source and treat it as the billed volume, but it’s still your best starting point. 2. Destination compute costs are separate Typing & deduping and destination-side transformations (e.g., dbt models in BigQuery) can significantly increase destination compute costs, and these are explicitly called out as not tied to Airbyte credit usage. [[Typing & deduping](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/using-airbyte/core-concepts/typing-deduping#loading-data-incrementally-to-final-tables)] So you need to consider two components: - Volume-based charges from Airbyte (based on data in transit). - Destination compute charges (e.g., BigQuery bytes processed), which can be much higher than the final table size due to merges, history tables, etc. [[Typing & deduping](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/using-airbyte/core-concepts/typing-deduping#loading-data-incrementally-to-final-tables)] 3. What you can do in practice The knowledge sources don’t describe a built-in “pre-sync estimator” that inspects a source and tells you the exact cost before running. To approximate, you’d typically: - Use your source system to estimate: - Table sizes or row counts. - Expected daily/weekly change volume (for incremental syncs). - Add a safety factor because Airbyte’s serialized format is larger than raw DB storage. [[Connection timeline](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/cloud/managing-airbyte-cloud/review-connection-timeline#syncs-refreshes-and-clears)] - For destinations like BigQuery, estimate bytes processed based on how often typing/deduping or merges will scan existing data. [[Typing & deduping](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/using-airbyte/core-concepts/typing-deduping#loading-data-incrementally-to-final-tables)] However, the exact multiplier between source size and Airbyte-measured volume is not documented, so any numeric factor would be guesswork. 4. Cost estimator There is mention of an Airbyte cost estimator UI being improved, but the docs here don’t describe how it derives estimates or how to use it without knowing data volume; they only note UI improvements. [[February 2023 release](https://docs.airbyte.com/release_notes/february_2023#airbyte-v0410-and-airbyte-platform-v0410)] --- Because of these gaps, I can’t give you a precise formula or tool from the docs to predict cost without at least a rough estimate of data volume. The documented approach is: estimate data size/change rate from the source, then understand that Airbyte will see a somewhat larger volume in transit and that destination compute (especially typing/deduping) can add additional, separate costs.