Buying snapshot
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| Decision point | What Fivetran states |
|---|---|
Processing location | Connectors run on servers in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia, India and Singapore; you choose the location for each destination. Business Critical customers can also pick a specific cloud region. |
Custom sources | The Connector SDK lets you write a custom connector in Python that Fivetran runs on your schedule and scales for you. The SDK repository is MIT-licensed. |
Certifications | SOC 1 and SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA BAA, ISO 27001 and HITRUST. PCI DSS Level 1 certification is listed as a Business Critical plan feature. |
Our take
Choose Fivetran when keeping many SaaS, database and ERP sources flowing into a warehouse or lake is your bottleneck, and you would rather pay by usage than maintain connectors yourself. Fivetran itself recommends Standard for database sources, 15-minute syncs or REST API access, Enterprise for high-volume replication and granular permissions, and Business Critical for the strictest data-protection requirements.
Evaluate Fivetran
Popular comparisons
See 20 Fivetran comparisons
Where it stands out
You pay for changed rows, not syncs. A row counts once per month however many times it updates, initial syncs do not incur a cost for the historical data they load, and unchanged rows in re-imported tables do not count. You can also block tables and non-key columns you do not need.
Move, transform and activate under one plan. Fivetran runs SQL-based transformations in your destination, integrates with dbt Core on Standard, and syncs modeled data to activation destinations, all under consolidated usage-based pricing.
Custom connectors without your own infrastructure. Connector SDK connections run on Fivetran's managed compute; Fivetran says this removes the timeout and data-size limits seen in AWS Lambda.
Product screenshot
Trade-offs to weigh
Costs follow how your data changes. History mode inserts a new row for every change, deletes count as updates, and the same source synced to two destinations counts twice. Editing years-old records every sync can make a large share of a table active each month.
Predictable bills cost extra. For customers who prioritize predictability, Fivetran prices fixed-price Enterprise License Agreements at a premium to the estimated consumption cost of the planned workload.
Custom connectors still count as usage. After a 14-day trial, Connector SDK usage counts toward paid MAR, and its API calls may count against the source's API allocation and trigger rate limits.
Pricing and plan conditions
Connection and activation usage is measured in monthly active rows (MAR): distinct primary keys inserted, updated or deleted in a calendar month. Transformation usage is measured in successful model runs. Each connection and activation has its own cost curve, with a unit rate that falls as volume grows and differs by plan; Fivetran points to its Service Consumption table for the rates and to its Pricing Estimator for estimates.
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| Plan | Price basis | What the plan includes or adds |
|---|---|---|
Free | Free up to 500,000 MAR for connections, 3,500 MAR for activations and 5,000 model runs per month | Standard plan features within those limits. |
Standard | Usage-based | Unlimited users, 15-minute syncs, 700+ fully managed connectors, 200+ activation destinations, dbt Core integration, role-based access control, REST API and SSH tunnels. |
Enterprise | Usage-based | All Standard features plus 1-minute syncs, Activations' Audience Hub, enterprise database connectors, custom roles, VPN tunnels (annual contract only), SCIM provisioning, a choice of cloud provider and a hybrid deployment option. |
Business Critical | Usage-based | All Enterprise features plus customer-managed encryption keys, PCI DSS Level 1 certification and private networking options. |
Connection base charge: $5 for each connection with between 1 and 1 million MAR in a month; it does not apply to accounts on the Free plan.
Transformations: the first 5,000 model runs each month are free on all plans; list rates are $0.01 per run from 5,001 to 30,000, $0.007 from 30,001 to 100,000 and $0.002 above 100,000.
Trials: a 14-day free account trial, then 14 days of free use for every new connection; new activations and Quickstart data models also get 14-day trials.
Billing options: monthly pay-as-you-go or annual subscriptions, by invoice or card, or through the AWS, GCP and Azure marketplaces. Annual discounts start at 5% and rise with the contract's annual list price.
Public signals
About these signals
Verified factual signals from public sources. They indicate observable activity or interest, not total adoption, product quality, or cost.
19 GitHub commits 90d137 GitHub stars0 vulnerabilities across 1 package
See all signals from 7 sources
PyPI · fivetran-connector-sdk@3.1.0
Alternatives to Fivetran
The reviewed substitutes for Fivetran among the ELT platforms, and what would make each one the better answer.
Direct alternatives
Reviewed substitutes: products bought for the same job, where a team picks one.
- Airbyte
- Choose this if you want Fivetran-level connector coverage with open-source flexibility and significantly lower costs.Applies to: Choosing between two products of the same kind for one job.
- Hevo Data
- Choose this if you want a managed Fivetran alternative with stronger support and more transparent, event-based pricing.Applies to: Choosing how data gets from sources into the warehouse.
- Rivery
- Choose this if your primary data sources are marketing and sales SaaS tools and you want bundled orchestration.Applies to: Choosing how data gets from sources into the warehouse.
- Stitch
- Choose this if you need straightforward, low-cost batch ELT for a small number of sources.Applies to: Choosing between two products of the same kind for one job.
- dlt (data load tool)
- Fivetran and dlt (data load tool) both move data from sources into a warehouse with incremental loading and schema handling. Fivetran is a managed service where connectors are configured rather than written, while dlt is an open-source Python library that engineers use to write their own pipelines in code.Applies to: Choosing how data gets from sources into the warehouse.
Other approaches
A different approach to the same problem. Each substitutes only for the workload named beside it.
- AWS Glue
- Choose this if you are AWS-native and want granular control over ETL jobs without paying connector-level premiums.Applies to: Deciding how the stack is shaped, where both products can be part of the answer.
- Polytomic
- Choose this if you need bidirectional sync capabilities and want to replace multiple point solutions with one platform.Applies to: Deciding how the stack is shaped, where both products can be part of the answer.
Head to head
See detailed alternatives analysis
Fivetran is the dominant managed ELT platform with 700+ pre-built connectors, but its usage-based pricing on Monthly Active Rows can escalate quickly as data volumes grow. Teams facing a growing Fivetran bill often find strong Fivetran alternatives that deliver comparable reliability at a fraction of the cost. We reviewed the top options across open-source flexibility, managed simplicity, and specialized use cases to help you pick the right replacement.
Top Alternatives Overview
Airbyte is the strongest all-around Fivetran alternative, offering 600+ connectors with an open-source core (21,000+ GitHub stars) and a managed cloud option starting at $20/month. Airbyte supports batch and CDC replication, integrates natively with dbt, and lets teams build custom connectors in under 30 minutes with its Connector Development Kit. Choose this if you want Fivetran-level connector coverage with open-source flexibility and significantly lower costs.
Stitch is the simplest entry point for small teams that need basic SaaS and database replication without engineering overhead. It offers a free trial and a Standard plan from $100/month, with pricing that scales with monthly row volume and stays predictable at small to mid-range volumes. Stitch covers around 130 data sources and loads into standard cloud warehouses. It lacks advanced transformation capabilities and handles fewer connectors than Fivetran, but its simplicity is a genuine advantage for lean teams. Choose this if you need straightforward, low-cost batch ELT for a small number of sources.
Hevo Data is a fully managed, no-code ELT platform that provides real-time data syncing and automatic schema mapping. Hevo's free tier supports up to 1 million events per month with limited connectors. Starter begins at $265/month billed annually, or $299/month billed monthly, for a 5-million-event allowance. Hevo emphasizes zero-maintenance pipelines with 150+ pre-built connectors and built-in Python transformations. Users consistently praise its 24/7 customer support and drag-and-drop interface. Choose this if you want a managed Fivetran alternative with stronger support and more transparent, event-based pricing.
AWS Glue is a serverless ETL service rated 8.6/10 across 42 reviews that excels when your data already lives in the AWS ecosystem. It charges $0.40 per GB scanned after a free tier of 3 million bytes per month, with no fixed monthly cost. Glue handles data cataloging, schema discovery, and Spark-based transformations natively. It requires more engineering effort than Fivetran but eliminates per-connector fees entirely. Choose this if you are AWS-native and want granular control over ETL jobs without paying connector-level premiums.
Rivery is a cloud ELT platform built for marketing, sales, and operational data teams. Base costs $0.90 per BDU credit with monthly billing. Professional has no published numeric price; its trial ends after 14 days or 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. Pro Plus credit price not published; annual and Enterprise plans are arranged with Rivery. Rivery provides pre-built data pipeline recipes and an insights dashboard, handling the full ELT and reverse ETL cycle in one interface. It offers 5-minute minimum sync frequencies and built-in orchestration that Fivetran charges extra for. Choose this if your primary data sources are marketing and sales SaaS tools and you want bundled orchestration.
Polytomic is a no-code data sync platform that handles ETL, reverse ETL, and iPaaS workflows in a single tool. Pricing begins at $500/month, with Standard and Enterprise plans quoted beyond that. Polytomic syncs data bidirectionally between databases, warehouses, SaaS tools, spreadsheets, and APIs, which means you do not need separate tools for forward and reverse data flows. Choose this if you need bidirectional sync capabilities and want to replace multiple point solutions with one platform.
Architecture and Approach Comparison
Fivetran operates as a fully managed, cloud-only SaaS platform where all connector logic, scheduling, and schema management run on Fivetran's infrastructure. It processes over 9.1 petabytes of data per month and handles 22.2 million schema changes monthly, which speaks to its maturity at scale. The platform uses a proprietary connector architecture where Fivetran's engineering team maintains every connector, guaranteeing consistent quality but creating vendor lock-in.
Airbyte takes the opposite approach with a container-based architecture where each source and destination connector runs in its own Docker container. This microservices design allows teams to self-host on Kubernetes, run locally for development, or use the managed cloud. The Airbyte Protocol (a JSON stream between containers) decouples source and destination logic entirely, enabling any connector to work with any other. This architecture gives engineering teams full visibility into pipeline internals.
AWS Glue uses a serverless Spark-based execution model with an integrated Data Catalog for schema discovery. Unlike Fivetran's connector-centric model, Glue treats ETL as code (Python or Scala scripts) with automatic scaling. Astronomer (Astro) and Prefect sit in the orchestration layer rather than the ingestion layer, meaning they coordinate pipeline execution across multiple tools rather than moving data directly. Astronomer's Astro engine benchmarked against AWS MWAA and GCP Composer across 5,400 DAGs, positioning it as the production-grade Airflow host. Confluent addresses real-time streaming with Apache Kafka and Flink, serving use cases where Fivetran's batch model (minimum 1-minute syncs on Enterprise) falls short.
Pricing Comparison
Fivetran's pricing is consumption-based on Monthly Active Rows (MAR), with a free tier at 500,000 MAR and four paid tiers: Standard, Enterprise (1-minute syncs), and Business Critical (PCI DSS Level 1).
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| Tool | Free Tier | Starting Price | Pricing Model | Typical Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fivetran | 500K MAR | Usage-based | Monthly Active Rows | Varies by usage |
| Airbyte | Self-hosted unlimited | $20/mo cloud (Standard) | Credits (volume-based) | Varies by usage |
| Stitch | Free trial | $100/mo (Standard) | Per-row | Varies by row volume |
| Hevo Data | 1M events/month on Free | Starter from $265/mo, billed annually | Event-based | Varies by event volume |
| AWS Glue | 3M bytes/mo | $0.40/GB | Pay-per-scan | Varies by usage |
| Rivery | Professional trial: 14 days or 1,000 credits, whichever comes first | Base: $0.90 per BDU credit, monthly billing | Usage-based | Professional price not published; Pro Plus credit price not published; annual and Enterprise plans through Rivery |
| Polytomic | No | $500/mo | Quote-based | Quote only |
Kuda, for example, moved from Fivetran's credit-based system to Airbyte specifically because of budget uncertainty. AWS Glue can be the cheapest option for AWS-heavy workloads since you pay only for compute time consumed, with no per-connector fees.
When to Consider Switching
Switch from Fivetran when your MAR-based bill exceeds $3,000/month and continues climbing with data volume growth. Fivetran's pricing model penalizes teams whose row counts scale faster than their budget, which is common in event-driven architectures and high-frequency SaaS syncing.
Consider alternatives when you need real-time streaming below 1-minute latency. Fivetran's Enterprise tier offers 1-minute syncs, but Confluent delivers sub-second streaming via Kafka and Flink for operational analytics and event-driven architectures where batch intervals are unacceptable.
Move to Airbyte or AWS Glue when your engineering team wants infrastructure control. Fivetran's fully managed model means you cannot inspect connector internals, debug data discrepancies at the pipeline level, or deploy in your own VPC without the Enterprise Hybrid Deployment option. Airbyte's open-source core gives teams full source code access and self-hosting capability.
Evaluate Hevo Data or Stitch when your team is non-technical and needs simpler tooling. Fivetran is powerful but complex; its 700+ connector catalog creates decision overhead for teams that only need 10-20 integrations. Hevo's auto-schema mapping and Stitch's minimal configuration reduce time-to-first-pipeline from days to hours.
Migration Considerations
Migrating from Fivetran requires mapping your existing connector configurations to the target platform's equivalents. Airbyte covers the majority of Fivetran's 700+ connectors, but verify your specific sources since community-maintained Airbyte connectors can vary in reliability compared to Fivetran's vendor-maintained ones. Stitch covers only about 130 sources, so confirm coverage before committing.
Schema compatibility is generally straightforward since most ELT tools load into the same cloud warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks). Fivetran's Quickstart data models and dbt integration mean your downstream transformation layer (if built on dbt) transfers directly to Airbyte, which also supports dbt Core natively. AWS Glue requires rewriting pipeline logic as PySpark or Python scripts, which is a larger engineering investment.
Expect a 1-2 week migration window for teams with 20-50 active connectors. Airbyte users report setting up pipelines in under 2 minutes per connector for supported sources, with historical data backfills running at scale (one team migrated 50 TB from Teradata to Snowflake in one week). Run both platforms in parallel during transition to validate row counts and data accuracy before cutting over. Budget for connector-specific testing, especially for complex sources like SAP, Salesforce, or database CDC replication where schema evolution handling differs between platforms.