Census vs Lytics — Pricing, Plans, and Verified Costs (2026)
Both Census and Lytics use custom pricing — request quotes from each to compare.
How pricing works
These two tools don't price the same way, so the headline numbers below aren't directly comparable until you plug in your own volume.
- Census (Per Usage) — Census bills purely on usage — Monthly Active Rows (MAR). There is no fixed per-seat fee, so the monthly cost depends entirely on how much you consume.
- Lytics (Per Usage) — Lytics bills purely on usage — Credits (one credit = one user profile update). There is no fixed per-seat fee, so the monthly cost depends entirely on how much you consume.
Per-minute, per-credit and per-token rates exclude any downstream model, speech or telephony costs unless the vendor states otherwise.
A warehouse-native data activation tool, now sold as Fivetran Activations following Fivetran's acquisition in May 2025. Its connectivity proposition is syncing modelled data out of Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks and Redshift into 200+ operational tools — Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Braze, Zendesk, NetSuite and the ad platforms — so that the definitions your data team maintains in the warehouse are the same ones sales and marketing act on. Under Fivetran it pairs natively with Fivetran's inbound pipelines, making it the one option here that covers both directions inside a single vendor relationship. Billed on Monthly Active Rows.
A composable, Google Cloud-native CDP acquired by Contentstack in January 2025. Its connectivity design leans on running inside your own cloud: it deploys into your Google Cloud project and works directly against BigQuery, so customer data never leaves your infrastructure, while still syncing audiences out to ad platforms, email tools and personalisation engines. Under Contentstack it is being positioned alongside the CMS, pairing content management with audience data so that personalisation decisions and the content they serve sit in one stack. Billed in credits, where one credit is one update to a user profile.
All plans compared
| Tier role | Plan | Census monthly | Census annual | Lytics monthly | Lytics annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free / starter | Free / Developer | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Enterprise | — / Enterprise | — | — | Custom | Custom |
Tier names differ across vendors. Rows are aligned by tier role, not name. Full tier structures on each tool's page.
What each is best for
Census is worth it if… Census is the natural pick if you already run Fivetran for ingestion — one vendor, one contract, data in and data out. The consumption model means there is no meaningful fixed monthly fee, so light workloads genuinely cost very little, but it also means your bill scales with row volume rather than sitting flat.
Lytics is worth it if… Lytics appeals to teams already standardised on Google Cloud who want a CDP that does not become another data silo. The credit model is unusually legible — you can reason about cost by estimating profile updates rather than decoding tiers.
Bottom line: Similar positioning, closer to a preference call than a strategic one.
Choose Census over Lytics if…
Choose Census if…
- You want to pay only for actual usage (per usage, a free entry tier).
- You match the profile Census is built for: the natural pick if you already run Fivetran for ingestion — one vendor, one contract, data in and data out.
- You need a general-purpose cdp (customer data platform) option rather than a vertical-specific one.
Choose Lytics if…
- You want to pay only for actual usage (per usage, a free entry tier).
- You match the profile Lytics is built for: Lytics appeals to teams already standardised on Google Cloud who want a CDP that does not become another data silo.
- You need a general-purpose cdp (customer data platform) option rather than a vertical-specific one.
At a glance
| Census | Lytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Entry price | Pricing not published | Pricing not published |
| Enterprise available | No | Yes |
| Pricing model | Per Usage | Per Usage |
| Verification | Checked September 24, 2026 | Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Full pricing | View full pricing | View full pricing |
Pricing last verified September 24, 2026. Tracked daily.