Soda review

#2 in Data Quality ToolsScore 8.7/10Checked Nov 15, 2026By BestSoftwareGuides Editorial Team

Soda is a data quality platform built around data contracts, with metric monitoring and a Python engine (Soda Core). It ranks #2 of 17 in our data quality tools list (8.7/10). Best for data engineering teams that want data contracts and pipeline tests with a free tier and published team price.

Also ranked in Data Monitoring Testing Tools (#2, 9.6/10), File Testing Tools (#5, 8.2/10).

Price: Free plan · paid from $750/mo.

Visit Soda Full pricing Alternatives

What Soda is

Soda checks data against YAML data contracts (schema, row count, missing and invalid values, freshness) and adds metric monitoring that flags anomalies automatically. It has a free plan, a Team plan at $750 per month, and runs either Soda-hosted or as a self-hosted runner in your Kubernetes cluster.

Pros and cons

Where it wins

Published pricing: Free at $0 and Team at $750 per month
Free plan includes unlimited users and alerting and ticketing integrations, no credit card needed
Alerts to Slack and Microsoft Teams; custom SQL metric monitors supported
Deployment options: Python libraries in pipelines, Soda-hosted runner, or self-hosted runner

Where it falls short

Soda Core v4 is under the Elastic License 2.0, not an OSI open-source license
SSO, RBAC, audit logs and the no-code interface require the Team plan
Usage beyond the free Soda Processing Units (SPUs) is billed pay-as-you-go

Soda pricing

Soda pricing plans
Plan	Billed annually	Billed monthly	Annual saving	Notes
Free	Free	Free	—	Includes free SPUs; pay as you go for additional SPUs; unlimited users
Team	—	$750/mo	—	$750 per month (flat, per the pricing page); 'Annual billing and volume discounts available' but no annual price shown
Enterprise	Custom quote	Custom quote	—	Custom pricing

USD, per user per month unless noted. "—" means the price is not published or we could not confirm it. Last checked Nov 15, 2026. Status: verified on Soda's pricing page.

Key facts

Free plan	Yes. Free plan with free Soda Processing Units (SPUs), unlimited users, pipeline testing, metrics observability and alerting; no credit card. Soda Core library is also free to use (Elastic License 2.0).
Free trial	Not advertised
Paid from	See vendor · $750 monthly
Minimum seats	1
Platforms	Cloud (SaaS), Self-hosted runner (Kubernetes), Python library, Private deployment (Team plan), Python library (Soda Core)
Compliance and security	SSO (Team plan), RBAC (Team plan), Audit logs (Team plan), SSO (Team), Audit logs (Team)
Support	Premium support (Team), Community Slack, Docs
Data profiling	Yes
Custom rule checks	Yes
ML anomaly detection	Yes
Data cleansing / correction	Not confirmed
Open source	No
Facts checked	Nov 15, 2026 · verified on the vendor's own site (source)

Also ranked in

Soda is ranked in 3 of our lists: #2 of 17 in Data Quality Tools, and:

#2 of 12 in Data Monitoring Testing Tools

Score 9.6/10

#5 of 10 in File Testing Tools

Score 8.2/10

Soda alternatives

iceDQ 7.8/10

Enterprise QA and data teams testing ETL pipelines, migrations and BI reports

Deequ 8.4/10

Spark and Scala/Python engineers validating large datasets in batch pipelines

Elementary 8.4/10

Analytics engineering teams that build with dbt

Informatica Data Quality & Observability 8.2/10

Large enterprises already using Informatica IDMC or PowerCenter

Great Expectations (GX Core) 7.9/10

Python data engineers who want code-defined data tests in pipelines at no license cost

Acceldata Data Observability Cloud (ADOC) 7.8/10

Enterprises that want data quality monitoring and warehouse/lakehouse cost monitoring in one product

Ataccama ONE 7.8/10

Large and regulated organizations that want data quality, MDM and governance in one platform

BiG EVAL NX³ 7.8/10

Regulated enterprises (banking, insurance, retail) automating data tests at scale

Qlik Talend Data Quality 7.8/10

Organizations using Qlik or Talend for data integration that want quality built into pipelines

Anomalo 7.4/10

Enterprises that want unsupervised anomaly detection without writing many rules, including in their own VPC

Bigeye 7.4/10

Enterprises with a mix of cloud warehouses and legacy systems (Oracle, DB2, Netezza, SSIS, DataStage)

Collibra Data Quality & Observability 7.4/10

Enterprises already using Collibra for data governance and cataloging

Experian Aperture Data Studio 7.4/10

Organizations cleaning customer and contact data (addresses, emails, phone numbers) at scale

RightData DataTrust 7.4/10

Enterprises reconciling data across migrations, ETL pipelines and financial controls

Monte Carlo 7/10

Mid-size and large data teams that want automated monitoring across a warehouse, ETL and BI stack

Sifflet 7/10

Data teams that want observability and a data catalog in one tool, including regulated firms needing self-hosting

Soda compared

Frequently asked questions

How much does Soda cost?

Soda has a free plan ($750 billed monthly). Prices last checked Nov 15, 2026.

Is Soda free?

Yes. Free plan with free Soda Processing Units (SPUs), unlimited users, pipeline testing, metrics observability and alerting; no credit card. Soda Core library is also free to use (Elastic License 2.0).

What are the best Soda alternatives?

Deequ (8.4/10), Elementary (8.4/10), Informatica Data Quality & Observability (8.2/10) are the highest-scoring alternatives in our data quality tools ranking.

Sources

Soda: official pricing page · Soda pricing page · Soda docs index (profiling, metric monitoring, freshness, Slack/Teams) · Soda docs: deployment options · Soda Core GitHub repository and LICENSE · Soda home page · Soda Core v3 release notes · Soda docs: DuckDB data source (v4) · soda-core LICENSE (GitHub)