Data 360 (Data Cloud) Pricing and Credits

Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) is billed in credits or per profile. With Flex Credits, $500 per 100,000 at list price, steps such as unifying profiles or publishing a segment use credits at rate-card rates. The Profiles models cost $240 or $420 per 1,000 profiles a year. Orgs that bought before 24 February 2026 use Data Services credits.

All prices below are Salesforce list prices as published in October 2026; your contract sets what you pay. If you are new to the product, start with what Data 360 does for a marketing team.

How Much Does Data 360 Cost?

Flex Credits cost $500 per 100,000 credits; Profiles and Enterprise Profiles cost $240 and $420 per 1,000 profiles a year. With Flex Credits you pay for what you use, with the Profiles models a fixed amount per profile.

Source: Salesforce's Data 360 pricing page, checked 16 October 2026, "subject to change". On the Profiles models, the page says:

"Profile Pricing simply un-meters the usage types used to form unified profiles and replaces it with a single transparent Profile SKU aligned to how customers plan and measure today. You still use Flex Credits for non-profile based use cases like querying data or unstructured data processing for AI agents."

Salesforce Help is more specific: orgs with the Profiles licence "aren't billed for batch data transforms, identity resolution rulesets, segments, and batch calculated insights." The trade-off: the number of identity resolution rulesets "is determined by the base Data 360 Profile license and can't be increased."

Salesforce says Profiles suit "profile-based use cases like personalized marketing journeys", while Flex Credits "scale across any use case."

Salesforce Help sets what counts as a profile: with active identity resolution rulesets, the billable count is "the sum of your known unified profiles, 4% of your anonymous profiles, and the total number of records in all DLOs mapped to DMOs categorized as Profile that aren't used by identity resolution." Count these in your org before you compare a Profiles quote with a Flex Credits estimate.

Flex Credits can be bought upfront, pay-as-you-go or as a pre-commit, and the same credits pay for Agentforce. The rate card is strict about expiry: "Flex Credits must be used before the Order End Date set forth in the Usage Details table on the Order Form, and no rollover will be permitted."

Data Services Credits or Flex Credits: Which Do You Have?

That depends on when your org bought or renewed. Salesforce's Help page on billable usage types sets the date:

"If you purchased credits before February 24, 2026, your org consumes Data Services credits for Data 360 services. Orgs purchasing or renewing after February 24, 2026 can have either Data Services or Flex Credits."

Nobody has to switch. The pricing page FAQ says:

"There is no forced migration with this pricing change so current Data Services credit customers can stay on their current pricing model. If you would like to take advantage of Flex Credits or Profile Pricing you will need to swap all of your existing Data Services Credits."

If an org holds both kinds, the order is fixed: "If you have any active Data Services credits, those credits are consumed first." Flex Credits take over when the Data Services credits run out or if there never were any.

Each kind has its own rate card with its own multipliers: Data Services credits the "Salesforce Customer Data Cloud Rate Card" (last updated August 2025), Flex Credits the Flex Credits rate card (31 August 2026). Every number in this article is from the Flex card; never calculate across the two.

Older contracts may still name Segmentation and Activation credits. Since 4 September 2025, that usage is recorded on the Data Services card.

Is Data 360 Free?

Getting Data 360 is free, using it mostly isn't. Salesforce's pricing FAQ: "Salesforce customers can provision Data 360 for free with a limited amount of storage and consumption credits."

Salesforce Foundations and the Starter Allowance

Salesforce Foundations is a $0 add-on, and once you add its products "Data 360 will be automatically provisioned." It includes a starter allowance of credits. Salesforce's own pages name different amounts, so we print none: Digital Wallet and your order form show what your org got. Beyond it, "Overage fees will apply."

Salesforce's prerequisites page tells existing Pardot customers to request Data 360 access through their account executive. On an Enterprise, Performance or Unlimited org you can also add the licence yourself in the Your Account app, and provisioning "can take up to an hour".

What Doesn't Use Credits

• Data from Salesforce orgs. Rows from the Salesforce CRM connector and the other Salesforce connectors (Marketing Cloud, B2C Commerce, Marketing Cloud Personalization) are free: "As of August 7, 2025, usage of this type is included with Data 360 and doesn't consume credits." That covers your leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities, and the Pardot asset records (forms, links, landing pages, list emails) that come through the CRM connector's "Marketing - Account Engagement CRM" bundle. Some Salesforce guides still show CRM ingestion as billed; the billing page quoted here is newer and more specific.
• Batch ingestion under Flex Credits and Profiles. The pricing page lists "Ingestion: Free" for all three models and promises "free batch data ingestion and zero-copy integrations". The Flex Credits usage types have no batch ingestion entry.

Under Data Services credits, batch data from outside Salesforce is billed as Batch Data Pipeline, counted per row.

The Pardot Connector Is Not on the Free List

Pardot activity comes in through the Account Engagement connector, which isn't among the free Salesforce connectors. Salesforce's page on ingesting Pardot engagement data says:

"You can ingest as many activities as you want from Account Engagement. However, each ingestion consumes Data 360 credits. The number of credits consumed is based on the number of activities within the ingestion."

The page doesn't name the usage type, so watch the first loads in Digital Wallet. You choose a lookback date of up to two years when you set up the connector, and Salesforce warns the first ingestion can take days or weeks. A shorter lookback means fewer activities to pay for.

Changing the lookback date later doesn't remove data already ingested; to remove it, you pause the connector and remove the related data stream. Salesforce's integration guide lists what comes in at all: activities of prospects synced with a Salesforce lead, contact or person account, on assets with a connected campaign; operational emails stay out.

What Uses Data 360 Credits?

Almost everything after the data arrives. Salesforce sorts every billable action into a usage type, such as Unification for identity resolution, and the rate card gives each usage type a multiplier, for most usage types the number of credits per million rows processed.

In Salesforce's words: "The number of credits consumed is based on the number of units of each usage type used multiplied by the multiplier listed on the rate card for the usage type." These are the ones a B2B team on Marketing Cloud Next meets:

• Website tracking runs through the Streaming Pipeline usage type, which covers streams from the Website and Mobile App Connector and the Ingestion API in streaming mode.
• Identity resolution, which links the records of one person into a single profile, uses Unification: "After the first time a ruleset runs, only new or modified source profiles are counted." All active rulesets are added up. Our article on how identity resolution matches leads and contacts covers the rules behind it.
• Segments are charged under Segmentation "when the segment is published". Counting, previewing and publishing a segment also run queries, billed under Queries. The Data 360 Marketing Agent is unmetered.
• Activation sends segment data to other systems. Marketing Cloud Next doesn't need it: Salesforce writes that "Marketing Cloud Next doesn't require activations"; you publish the segment and use it in a campaign.
• Calculated insights and batch transforms use Prep. For batch calculated insights, usage counts "the number of records in all underlying objects used in creating the Calculated Insight each time it runs."
• Queries have one trap: queries in a data space count all processed rows in the source object, "not the number of rows pertaining to the particular data space".
• Storage and data spaces are billed beyond what is included: storage above the allocation, and every data space (a separate section of your data, for example per brand) beyond the default one.
• Marketing Cloud Next features draw on Data 360 too: Marketing Performance Intelligence, the reporting app, "consumes Data 360 credits", and when the Campaign Creation agent generates a segment from plain language, that uses Data 360 credits, while its prompts use Einstein Requests or Flex Credits.

What this means for sales: lead scores in Marketing Cloud Next are built on Data 360 calculated insights, which use credits, and the Pardot activity behind a score costs credits to bring in. In the setup Salesforce recommends for Pardot customers, Pardot stays the source for score and grade, so sales can keep the scores they know while Marketing Cloud Next runs alongside.

Which Other Credits Does Marketing Cloud Next Use?

Sending uses Message Credits, a separate kind from Data 360 credits. Salesforce's allocations page for Marketing Cloud Next lists email Message Credits of 180,000 a year in Growth Edition and 360,000 a year in Advanced Edition. SMS credits aren't included in any edition; SMS is an add-on. Plan the two budgets separately.

What Are the Data 360 Multipliers on the Flex Credits Rate Card?

The current card is the Flex Credits rate card, updated as of 31 August 2026, linked from Salesforce's rate card page. Per million rows, Unification, the usage type behind identity resolution, costs far more than anything else in the table.

Credits per 1 million rows processed. Source: Flex Credits rate card, updated as of 31 August 2026, checked 16 October 2026.

The tiers count per usage type and month: the base rate applies up to 300,000 credits, Tier 2 up to 1.5 million, Tier 3 up to 12.5 million, Tier 4 beyond. The card explains: "Tier multipliers are based on the individual usage type and reset on the first day of each calendar month." The card can also change: "Usage types, tiers, and associated multipliers may be updated from time to time."

What Does Data 360 Cost for a B2B Team? A Worked Example

In the example below, a B2B org with 50,000 leads and contacts uses about $23 of Data 360 credits in the first month and about $6 in each month after, at list price. The figures are an example built on assumptions, not a benchmark or a quote. To run the numbers for your own org, use our Data Cloud pricing calculator.

The assumptions:

• 50,000 leads and contacts come in from Salesforce CRM.
• One identity resolution ruleset on the Individual object; after the first run, 5,000 profiles are new or changed each month.
• 10 segments of about 50,000 records, each published eight times a month.
• 2 million rows of queries for building and previewing segments.
• 200,000 rows of website tracking a month.
• No Pardot activity ingestion, and no activation, because Marketing Cloud Next publishes.
• Flex Credits, production org, base tier, list price of $500 per 100,000 credits ($0.005 per credit).

Dollar amounts are rounded to the cent. These things change the numbers, and Salesforce documents each of them:

• Segment size is a stand-in. Salesforce bills "the number of records processed by a Data 360 segment"; the example takes the segment size for that number.
• Publishing runs queries too. Salesforce uses queries to run the segment query and create the processing history table, which the example leaves out. At the base rate of 3 credits per million rows, 10 million more rows would add 30 credits, $0.15.
• Changing a ruleset reruns everything. Changing match rules, reconciliation rules or filters, or mapping a new field to an object the ruleset uses, triggers a full run. In this example that is another 3,750 credits, $18.75, each time.
• Pardot activity adds credits per activity ingested, at a rate the connector page doesn't state.
• The price per credit is contractual. "The cost of each credit is determined by your contract."

The example shows where to look: identity resolution decides the first month, and website tracking decides the months after. Salesforce also offers a Data 360 Pricing Calculator for your own estimate. For a printed overview of what uses credits, download the one-pager Data 360 Credits, Explained for Marketers.

How Do You Check Your Data 360 Credits?

In Digital Wallet, which Salesforce calls "a free account management tool". It shows your consumption cards and usage, in Enterprise and Unlimited Editions and in production orgs only.

• Where: "You can access Digital Wallet from the Digital Wallet app or the Your Account app."
• Who: users with the View Consumption permission, in an org with a Data 360 licence (an older Customer Data Platform licence doesn't qualify).
• Alerts: flow templates notify people "when specific utilization thresholds are reached", for example at 80% consumption.

Your billing contact also gets a monthly summary: "A Monthly Usage Summary is emailed to your account's billing contact each month."

Do Data 360 Sandboxes Use Credits?

Yes, your production credits: "Usage generated by Data 360 sandbox orgs consumes production credits on the org the sandbox was created from." The usage shows on the production card in Digital Wallet, which isn't available in sandboxes itself. The rate card's sandbox multipliers (the last column above) are lower than the base rate, equal to Tier 2, apply to sandboxes and scratch orgs, and have no tiers.

One trap: "data streams replicated from your production org begin ingesting data and consuming credits immediately." Turn off the replicated streams you don't need right after creating the sandbox.

How Do You Keep Data 360 Costs Low?

Bring in less and publish only what campaigns use. Salesforce's billing pages list these levers:

• Ingest with incremental or upsert refreshes instead of a full refresh, and filter data at ingestion.
• Disable "Run jobs automatically" on an identity resolution ruleset before you make several changes, and test new rulesets in a sandbox first.
• Keep one active ruleset per primary object per data space, use ruleset filters so only the records you need enter identity resolution, and filter out email addresses that occur "more than 1000 times" or stand-in phone numbers.
• Preview segments on a sample, don't schedule publishes while testing, publish less often, set an end date and shorten the lookback window.

Your Options

• Stay on Pardot: doing nothing is a valid outcome. Check in Digital Wallet whether your org already has Data 360, for example through Salesforce Foundations, and whether anything uses credits.
• Add Marketing Cloud Next: Data 360 is required, and Salesforce Foundations is the no-cost way in. Start with a Readiness Check of your licence and Data 360 prerequisites, then set up Data 360 with only the data your campaigns use.
• Move more of your marketing to Marketing Cloud Next: plan the credits for identity resolution and website tracking first, because they drive the bill. Our Marketing Cloud Next consulting covers the move, Data 360 included.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Does Salesforce Data Cloud Cost?

At list price, Flex Credits cost $500 per 100,000 credits, Profiles $240 and Enterprise Profiles $420 per 1,000 profiles a year. Your contract sets the price you pay.

What Are Data Cloud Credits?

The unit Salesforce bills Data 360 usage in. Each action belongs to a usage type; its units, mostly rows processed, are multiplied by the rate-card multiplier and summed per month.

Can I Switch From Data Services Credits to Flex Credits?

Yes, but nobody forces you: "There is no forced migration." To switch to Flex Credits or Profiles, you swap all your existing Data Services credits. Speak to your account executive before the renewal.

Do Flex Credits Roll Over?

No. The rate card says credits must be used before the order end date "and no rollover will be permitted."

What Happens When Data 360 Credits Run Out?

Salesforce doesn't turn off access. You pay for the overage, with Data Services credits at your overage rate "for the remainder of your term unless more credits are added."