Setting up dbt State Preview

This page walks you through setting up dbt State across dbt Core, dbt platform, and Fusion.

Prerequisites

Before you set up dbt State, make sure you have:

• A supported dbt version: dbt State is natively available in dbt platform and the dbt Fusion engine. It's also available as a plugin for dbt Core v1.7–1.12.
• A supported data platform: Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or Redshift. More warehouses are on the roadmap.
• A dbt State account: Authenticate through a dbt platform account or a standalone dbt State account. Refer to About dbt State to choose the right option, and dbt State usage and pricing for pricing details. Note that dbt State isn't available on legacy Starter plan. Please contact dbt Labs if that applies to you.

Setting up dbt State

Set up dbt State either in dbt platform or locally in dbt Core by using the following steps depending on how you're using dbt.

dbt platform

Enabling dbt State on your account

Prerequisite: You must be an admin in your dbt platform account.

To enable dbt State:

1. In your dbt platform account, click your account name in the lower-left corner above your username and click Account settings.

2. Under Settings, go to State.

3. Click Start your 30-day free trial.

   Once started, you cannot pause the trial. After 30 days, you must add a credit card or enterprise contract to continue. For more information, refer to dbt State usage and pricing.

   Extended trial for state-aware orchestration users

   If you're using state-aware orchestration prior to June 1, 2026, your dbt State trial will be extended until the billing period begins on September 1, 2026. If the extension isn’t applied to your account, contact your account team.

4. Review and agree to the terms of service.

5. Click Start 30-day trial.

6. Click Enable dbt State.

   dbt State page

7. In the Upgrade to dbt State page, select the jobs to enable dbt State for. You can either enable:

   • By environment: Enables dbt State on all existing jobs within the selected environment at once. New deploy jobs created in that environment will have dbt State enabled automatically.
   • By specific jobs: Enables dbt State on individual jobs. To enable it on additional jobs later, refer to Enabling dbt State on individual jobs.

8. Click Enable dbt State.

The dbt State page where you started your trial in step 3 displays how many days remain in your trial period alongside the following monthly data:

• Number of models reused
• Total % build reduction
• Total query run time reduction

For next steps, see:

• Enable dbt State on individual jobs
• Enable dbt State in Studio

Fusion

1. Navigate to your project:

   cd to/your/project

2. Log in to dbt State:

   dbt login

   This opens a browser window where you can log in with your dbt platform account or the standalone dbt State app. For details on authentication behavior and how it affects user_settings.yml, refer to dbt login with dbt State.

dbt State is now enabled and will run automatically on every dbt run or dbt build.

You can also enable or disable dbt State per run using CLI flags: --manage-state or --no-manage-state, or set the DBT_ENGINE_MANAGE_STATE environment variable.

To enable dbt State for everyone on your project, add manage_state: true to the flags: block in dbt_project.yml:

flags:
  manage_state: true

dbt Core 1.7–1.12

dbt State is available as a plugin for dbt Core v1.7+. If you are running on dbt Core v1.9 or older, we encourage you to upgrade to a more recent version with ongoing support.

To install the plugin:

1. Navigate to your project:

   cd to/your/project

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate

3. Install the dbt State plugin:

   pip install dbt-state

dbt State is now enabled. The first time you execute dbt run or dbt build, a browser window opens where you can log in with your dbt platform account or the standalone dbt State app. After authenticating, dbt State runs automatically on every dbt run or dbt build.

The CLI flags --manage-state and --no-manage-state are not available in older dbt Core versions. Use the environment variable (DBT_ENGINE_ENABLE_STATE) or project flag (enable_state) to enable or disable dbt State.

Inviting team members

The more team members you have using dbt State, the better it gets; more team members means more opportunities to clone existing nodes rather than rebuilding them.

• For standalone app users: Click the invite link in the upper-right corner of the Users page.
• For dbt platform users: Have your colleagues run dbt login after dbt State is enabled on the account.

Debugging dbt State

If dbt State is behaving unexpectedly, you can prepend your run command with the DBT_ENGINE_MANAGE_STATE environment variable to isolate the issue:

DBT_ENGINE_MANAGE_STATE=1 dbt run --target dev --select "customers"

Next steps

• Migrate from state-aware orchestration
• dbt login with dbt State
• Configure deferral
• Configure lag tolerance
• Non-interactive environment setup
• dbt State configs

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