Resource Configs and Properties

severity, error_if, and warn_if

Tests return a number of failures—most often, this is the count of rows returned by the test query, but it could be a custom calculation. Generally, if the number of failures is nonzero, the test returns an error. This makes sense, as test queries are designed to return all the rows you don't want: duplicate records, null values, etc.

It's possible to configure tests to return warnings instead of errors, or to make the test status conditional on the number of failures returned. Maybe 1 duplicate record can count as a warning, but 10 duplicate records should count as an error.

The relevant configs are:

Config	Description	Default
severity	error or warn	error
error_if	Conditional expression	!=0
warn_if	Conditional expression	!=0

Conditional expressions can be any comparison logic that is supported by your SQL syntax with an integer number of failures:

> 5, = 0, between 5 and 10, and so on.

How those play in practice:

If severity: error, dbt will check the error_if condition first. If the error condition is met, the test returns an error. If it's not met, dbt will then check the warn_if condition (defaulted to !=0). If it's not specified or the warn condition is met, the test warns; if it's not met, the test passes.

If severity: warn, dbt will skip the error_if condition entirely and jump straight to the warn_if condition. If the warn condition is met, the test warns; if it's not met, the test passes.

By default, a test with severity: warn will only ever return a warning, and not cause errors. However, you can promote warnings to errors using:

--warn-error: Promotes all dbt warnings (including test warnings, Jinja warnings, deprecations, and so on.) to errors.

--warn-error-options: Promotes only specific types of warnings.

Learn more about Warnings.

Out-of-the-box generic tests

Singular tests

Custom generic tests

Project level

Configure a specific instance of an out-of-the-box generic test:

models/.yml
version:2
models:
  -name:large_table
    columns:
      -name:slightly_unreliable_columndata_tests:
        -unique:config:
          severity:errorerror_if:">1000"warn_if:">10"

Configure a singular test:

tests/.sql
{{ config(error_if='>50')}}
select...

Set the default for all instances of a custom generic test, by setting the config inside its test block (definition):

macros/.sql
{%test(model,column_name)%}{{ config(severity='warn')}}
select...
{%endtest%}

Set the default for all tests in a package or project:

dbt_project.yml
data_tests:
  +:severity:warn # all tests
  :
    +:warn_if:">10" # tests in 

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Last updated on Aug 29, 2025

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