Airbyte vs Keboola at a glance
| Airbyte | Keboola |
|---|
| Category | Data movement (ELT and CDC) platform | All-in-one managed data platform |
| Company | Open-source project launched in 2020 | Prague roots; $32M Series A led by Viking Global Investors in December 2023 |
| Connectors | 700+ maintained connectors, including SaaS APIs, databases, files and unstructured sources | Markets "1,500+ data sources" (relabeled from 700+ connectors in September 2026) |
| Custom connectors | No-code Connector Builder with AI assist, low-code CDK, Python CDK | Generic extractors and custom components built with its developer SDK |
| Storage | Your own warehouse, lakehouse or database | Keboola-managed Snowflake by default; your own backend on Enterprise |
| Transformation | Native dbt, Airflow, Dagster and Prefect integrations; you choose | Built-in SQL and Python (plus R and Julia on subscriptions); dbt support |
| Change data capture | Log-based CDC on every plan | "Tailored CDC and streaming" on Enterprise |
| Pricing model | Volume-based (Standard, Plus) or capacity-based Data Workers (Pro, Enterprise Flex) | Compute time credits |
| Entry price | Free (Core); $20/month (Standard) | Free plan: 120 minutes in month one, then 60 minutes/month; $0.14 per extra minute |
| Paid plans | Published | Enterprise only, quote-based |
| Deployment | Self-hosted (Core), managed cloud, hybrid or on-prem (Enterprise Flex) on one codebase | Multi-tenant SaaS on AWS, Azure or GCP; private SaaS or VPC on Enterprise |
| Python and API access | PyAirbyte, Airbyte API, Terraform provider | Keboola API, CLI and MCP server |
| Security and compliance | SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA conduit | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA (Enterprise) |
| Open source | Yes | No (many components are open source; the platform is not) |
| Community | 25,000+ members, 1,000+ contributors | Vendor-led |
About Airbyte
Airbyte is the open standard for data movement, used by 18% of the Fortune 500. It replicates data from 700+ sources into warehouses, lakehouses, databases and AI context stores, and runs self-hosted, fully managed, or hybrid inside your own boundary.
About Keboola
Keboola traces its roots to a Prague data agency founded in 2007 by Petr Šimeček and Milan Veverka. It raised a $5M seed round in 2022 and a $32M Series A in December 2023, led by Viking Global Investors, then the largest Series A in Central Europe that year. Keboola sells a managed data platform with ingestion, Keboola-managed storage, SQL and Python transformations, a visual Flow Builder, data apps, a data catalog, and an AI data engineering assistant called Kai. In 2026 its marketing shifted toward finance teams, with solutions for ERP consolidation, group reporting and private-equity portfolio roll-ups.
Pricing: compute credits vs. capacity
Keboola bills on time credits, the compute time its components use:
- Free plan: $0. One project, unlimited pipelines, SQL and Python transformations, an extra-small Snowflake backend, Flow Builder and the MCP server. You get 120 minutes of compute in the first month and 60 minutes a month after that; extra minutes cost $0.14 each. If you run out, jobs pause until you buy more.
- Enterprise: quote-based. Adds the data catalog and data sharing, data apps, CDC and streaming, Git-based dev/prod and CI/CD, private SaaS or VPC deployment, SSO, HIPAA, your own storage backend and a technical account manager.
There's no published middle tier. Sixty free minutes a month is enough to prototype, but any production workload moves quickly to an Enterprise contract, and because different components consume credits at different rates depending on backend and settings, forecasting a bill takes care.
Airbyte Core is free to self-host with no compute cap. Cloud starts at $20/month (Standard) and $189/month (Plus) with published pricing. Pro and Enterprise Flex price on Data Workers, dedicated compute capacity, so cost doesn't depend on row counts or per-component credit rates.
Connectors: 700+ maintained vs. "1,500+ data sources"
In September 2026, Keboola changed its headline catalog number from "700+ data connectors" to "1,500+ data sources", without publishing a breakdown of what changed. A data source isn't necessarily a dedicated, maintained connector: Keboola also offers generic database, REST API and file extractors that you configure yourself. Before choosing, check that the specific sources you need have dedicated connectors. Keboola's own connectors are strongest in European e-commerce, marketing tools and ERPs.
Airbyte counts 700+ connectors that each handle a source's authentication, pagination, incremental state and schema changes. When a source is missing, the Connector Builder generates a dedicated connector from API docs with AI assist, and engineers can use the low-code or Python CDK. Because connectors are open source, you can inspect, fix or extend any of them.
Keboola's value is that the whole stack lives in one place. Data lands in Keboola-managed Snowflake by default, transformations and orchestration run inside Keboola, and data apps and the catalog sit on top. For a team without a data platform, that's a fast start.
The trade-off is that storage, models and orchestration all live in one vendor's environment, and bringing your own warehouse is an Enterprise feature. Airbyte does one job and loads into the warehouse, lakehouse or database you already run, then integrates with dbt Core, dbt Cloud, Airflow, Dagster and Prefect, so each layer stays your choice and you keep leverage at renewal.
Change data capture
Keboola lists CDC and streaming as tailored Enterprise features, so teams on the Free plan rely on scheduled, query-based extraction from databases.
Airbyte includes log-based CDC on every plan, including free self-hosted Core, for databases such as Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and MongoDB. Destinations stay close to real time while minimizing load on production systems.
Deployment and data residency
Keboola runs as multi-tenant SaaS across AWS, Azure and GCP, with Free plan projects hosted on Azure in the EU. Enterprise customers can choose the cloud and region or run Keboola as private SaaS in their own VPC. There's no self-managed edition you can download and run on your own servers.
Airbyte runs four ways on one codebase: free self-hosted Core, managed cloud, hybrid with an Airbyte-managed control plane, or fully on-prem and multi-region with Enterprise Flex. Data can stay entirely inside your own boundary, which matters for data residency, regulated industries and air-gapped environments.
Developer and AI access
Keboola offers an API, a CLI and an MCP server, available on the Free plan, so AI tools can work with Keboola projects, plus its own Kai AI assistant for building pipelines. Git-based dev/prod environments and CI/CD are Enterprise features.
Airbyte's core is open source, with 1,000+ contributors and 25,000+ community members. Engineers manage pipelines as code with the Airbyte API and Terraform provider on any plan, and PyAirbyte runs connectors directly from Python or notebooks to feed AI applications and agents. You can inspect exactly how every connector handles your data.
Where Keboola leads
Keboola is a strong fit for organizations without an existing data platform that want ingestion, storage, transformation, orchestration, data apps and a catalog from one vendor, and for finance teams consolidating many ERPs and entities into governed reporting.
When to choose Airbyte vs Keboola
| Your situation | Better fit |
|---|
| You already run a warehouse or lakehouse and want ingestion to load into it | Airbyte |
| You need CDC without an Enterprise contract | Airbyte |
| You want published pricing between free and enterprise | Airbyte |
| You need to self-host on your own servers or run fully on-prem | Airbyte |
| You want transformation and orchestration in dbt, Airflow or Dagster | Airbyte |
| You need a dedicated connector for a long-tail source, built in minutes | Airbyte (Connector Builder) |
| You have no data platform yet and want one vendor for the whole stack | Keboola |
| You're a finance team consolidating many ERPs and entities into governed reporting | Keboola |
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