Upgrade dbt version in Cloud

In dbt Cloud, both jobs and environments are configured to use a specific version of dbt Core. The version can be upgraded at any time.

Environments

Navigate to the settings page of an environment, then click Edit. Click the dbt version dropdown bar and make your selection. You can select a previous release of dbt Core or go Versionless (recommended). Be sure to save your changes before navigating away.

Example environment settings in dbt Cloud

Versionless

By choosing to go Versionless, you opt for an experience that provides the latest features and early access to new functionality for your dbt project. dbt Labs will handle upgrades for you, as part of testing and redeploying the dbt Cloud SaaS application. Versionless always includes the most recent features before they're in dbt Core, and more.

You can upgrade to the Versionless experience no matter which version of dbt you currently have selected. As a best practice, dbt Labs recommends that you test the upgrade in development first; use the Override dbt version setting to test your project on the latest dbt version before upgrading your deployment environments and the default development environment for all your colleagues.

To upgrade an environment in the dbt Cloud Admin API or Terraform, set dbt_version to the string versionless.

Override dbt version

Configure your project to use a different dbt Core version than what's configured in your development environment. This override only affects your user account, no one else's. Use this to safely test new dbt features before upgrading the dbt version for your projects.

1. Click your account name from the left side panel and select Account settings.
2. Choose Credentials from the sidebar and select a project. This opens a side panel.
3. In the side panel, click Edit and scroll to the User development settings section. Choose a version from the dbt version dropdown and click Save.

An example of overriding the configured version with 1.7 for the selected project:

Example of overriding the dbt version on your user account

1. (Optional) Verify that dbt Cloud will use your override setting to build the project. Invoke dbt build in the IDE's command bar. Expand the System Logs section and find the output's first line. It should begin with Running with dbt= and list the version dbt Cloud is using.

Example output of a successful dbt build run:

Example output showing version 1.7 being used, not 1.5

Jobs

Each job in dbt Cloud can be configured to inherit parameters from the environment it belongs to.

Settings of a dbt Cloud job

The example job seen in the screenshot above belongs to the environment "Prod". It inherits the dbt version of its environment as shown by the Inherited from ENVIRONMENT_NAME (DBT_VERSION) selection. You may also manually override the dbt version of a specific job to be any of the current Core releases supported by Cloud by selecting another option from the dropdown.

Supported versions

dbt Labs has always encouraged users to upgrade dbt Core versions whenever a new minor version is released. We released our first major version of dbt - dbt 1.0 - in December 2021. Alongside this release, we updated our policy on which versions of dbt Core we will support in dbt Cloud.

Starting with v1.0, all subsequent minor versions are available in dbt Cloud. Versions are actively supported, with patches and bug fixes, for 1 year after their initial release. At the end of the 1-year window, we encourage all users to upgrade to a newer version for better ongoing maintenance and support.

We provide different support levels for different versions, which may include new features, bug fixes, or security patches:

• Active — We will patch regressions, new bugs, and include fixes for older bugs / quality-of-life improvements. We implement these changes when we have high confidence that they're narrowly scoped and won't cause unintended side effects.
• Critical — Newer minor versions transition the previous minor version into "Critical Support" with limited "security" releases for critical security and installation fixes.
• End of Life — Minor versions that have reached EOL no longer receive new patch releases.
• Deprecated — dbt Core versions older than v1.0 are no longer maintained by dbt Labs, nor supported in dbt Cloud.

We'll continue to update the following release table so that users know when we plan to stop supporting different versions of Core in dbt Cloud.

Latest releases

dbt Core	Initial release	Support level and end date
v1.8	May 9 2024	Active Support — May 8, 2025
v1.7	Nov 2, 2023	dbt Core and dbt Cloud Developer & Team customers: End of Life dbt Cloud Enterprise customers: Critical Support until further notice 1
v1.6	Jul 31, 2023	End of Life ⚠️
v1.5	Apr 27, 2023	End of Life ⚠️
v1.4	Jan 25, 2023	End of Life ⚠️
v1.3	Oct 12, 2022	End of Life ⚠️
v1.2	Jul 26, 2022	End of Life ⚠️
v1.1	Apr 28, 2022	End of Life ⚠️
v1.0	Dec 3, 2021	End of Life ⚠️
v0.X ⛔️	(Various dates)	Deprecated ⛔️

All functionality in dbt Core since the v1.7 release is available in dbt Cloud, early and continuously, by selecting "Versionless".

¹ "Versionless" is now required for the Developer and Teams plans on dbt Cloud. Accounts using older dbt versions will be migrated to "Versionless."

For customers of dbt Cloud Enterprise, dbt v1.7 will continue to be available as an option while dbt Labs rolls out a mechanism for "extended" upgrades. In the meantime, dbt Labs strongly recommends migrating any environments that are still running on older unsupported versions to "Versionless" dbt or dbt v1.7.

Starting with v1.0, dbt Cloud will ensure that you're always using the latest compatible patch release of dbt-core and plugins, including all the latest fixes. You may also choose to try prereleases of those patch releases before they are generally available.

For more on version support and future releases, see Understanding dbt Core versions.

Need help upgrading?

If you want more advice on how to upgrade your dbt projects, check out our migration guides and our upgrading Q&A page.

Upgrading legacy versions under 1.0

You can use the following sections to successfully upgrade your version of dbt Core in dbt Cloud. We recommend everyone upgrade to the most recent version of dbt Core, as new versions contain enhancements, bug fixes, and updated security features. We document which versions of dbt Core are currently supported.

There aren't many breaking changes between minor versions, and it may be the case that you don't need to change any code to upgrade to a newer version of dbt in dbt Cloud. There are only breaking changes between minor versions of dbt before dbt 1.0. Minor releases starting with dbt 1.0, do not have breaking code changes. If there are no code changes needed, all you have to do is change the settings in your environment or job to run a more recent version of dbt.

Changes between minor versions of dbt that will affect your project

Below we try to help you answer the question of whether a known breaking change between minor versions of dbt will affect your project. If you answer "yes" to any of the questions below, we recommend that you read the migration guides that we've put together for every dbt minor version release.

An Important Note on Packages

If you use any packages from dbt Hub, make sure you also upgrade to a version of the package that supports the dbt version you intend to upgrade to. You can see which dbt versions a package supports by checking on the require-dbt-version: in the package's dbt_project.yml file on GitHub.

As an example, dbt-utils version 0.7.6 supports dbt v0.20, v0.21, and v1.0, as described in its dbt_project.yml.

After you've changed the package version in your packages.yml file, be sure to run dbt deps in the IDE to install the updated version.

Upgrading to v1.0.latest from v0.21

Universal change

Certain configurations in dbt_project.yml have been renamed

Existing projects will see non-breaking deprecation warnings. You can change three lines in most projects to remove the warnings:

dbt_project.yml

model-paths: ["models"] # formerly named "source-paths"
seed-paths: ["data"]    # formerly named "data-paths"
clean-targets:
  - "target"
  - "dbt_packages"      # formerly named "dbt_modules"

• Do you select tests using the old names for test types? (test_type:schema, test_type:data, --schema, --data)
• Do you have custom macro code that calls the (undocumented) global macros column_list, column_list_for_create_table, incremental_upsert?
• Do you have custom scripts that parse dbt JSON artifacts?
• (BigQuery only) Do you use dbt's legacy capabilities around ingestion-time-partitioned tables?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.21.latest from v0.20

• Do you select specific sources to check freshness (dbt snapshot-freshness --select <source_name>)?
• Do you have custom scripts that parse dbt JSON artifacts?
• (Snowflake only) Do you have custom macros or materializations that depend on using transactions, such as statement blocks with auto_begin=True?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.20.latest from v0.19

• Does your project define any custom schema tests?
• Does your project use adapter.dispatch or the spark_utils package?
• Do you have custom scripts that parse dbt JSON artifacts?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.19.latest from v0.18

• Do you have custom scripts that parse dbt JSON artifacts?
• Do you have any custom materializations?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.18.latest from v0.17

• Do you directly call adapter_macro?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.17.latest from v0.16

Universal change

You must add config-version: 2 to your dbt_project.yml file.

dbt_project.yml

name: my_project
version: 1.0.0

config-version: 2

vars:
  my_var: 1
  another_var: true

models:
  ...

Universal change

vars: are now defined not in your models: but are a separate section in dbt_project.yml file.

dbt_project.yml

name: my_project
version: 1.0.0

config-version: 2

vars:
  my_var: 1
  another_var: true

models:
  ...

• Do you have dictionary configs in your dbt_project.yml such as partition_by or persist_docs? If yes, you need to add a preceding +.

dbt_project.yml

models:
  my_project:
    reporting:
      +partition_by:
        field: date_day
        data_type: timestamp

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.16.latest from v0.15

• Do you use the custom generate_schema_name macro?
• Do you use partition_by config for BigQuery models?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.15.latest from v0.14

• Do you have a custom materialization?
• Do you have a macro that accesses Relations directly?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Upgrading to v0.14.latest from v0.13

• Do you still use Archives?
• Do you use the custom generate_schema_name macro?
• Do you use the —non-destructive flag?

If you believe your project might be affected, read more details in the migration guide here.

Testing your changes before upgrading

Once you know what code changes you'll need to make, you can start implementing them. We recommend you create a separate dbt project, Upgrade Project, to test your changes before making them live in your main dbt project. In your Upgrade Project, connect to the same repository you use for your production project. This time, set the development environment settings to run the latest version of dbt Core. Next, check out a branch dbt-version-upgrade, make the appropriate updates to your project, and verify your dbt project compiles and runs with the new version in the IDE. If upgrading directly to the latest version results in too many issues, try testing your project iteratively on successive minor versions. There are years of development and a few breaking changes between distant versions of dbt Core (for example, 0.14 --> 1.0). The likelihood of experiencing problems upgrading between successive minor versions is much lower, which is why upgrading regularly is recommended.

Once you have your project compiling and running on the latest version of dbt in the development environment for your dbt-version-upgrade branch, try replicating one of your production jobs to run off your branch's code. You can do this by creating a new deployment environment for testing, setting the custom branch to 'ON' and referencing your dbt-version-upgrade branch. You'll also need to set the dbt version in this environment to the latest dbt Core version.

Setting your testing environment

Then add a job to the new testing environment that replicates one of the production jobs your team relies on. If that job runs smoothly, you should be all set to merge your branch into main and change your development and deployment environments in your main dbt project to run off the newest version of dbt Core.