Fivetran and Matillion solve different halves of the pipeline. Fivetran is a managed ingestion service, now merged with dbt Labs, that bills on Monthly Active Rows per connection. Matillion, now branded Maia, is a low-code pipeline builder that runs transformations inside your warehouse and bills in credits per task hour.

Fivetran vs Matillion at a glance

	Fivetran	Matillion (Maia)
Core focus	Managed ingestion (ELT), now bundled with dbt transformation	Low-code pipeline building and in-warehouse transformation, with AI agents
Prebuilt connectors	700+	150+ pre-built, plus no-code custom connectors
Custom connectors	Connector SDK (Python, customer-maintained), Functions; "By Request" with a 2–8 week initial review	No-code custom connector builder in Designer
Pricing model	Monthly Active Rows, billed per connection	Credits per task hour: 1 for orchestration, 3 for transformation, 1–2 for CDC streams
Published price	Free up to 500K MAR; Standard from ~$500 per million MAR	No per-credit price published; third-party listings cite ~$2.00 per credit
Minimums	$5/month per standard connection (1–1M MAR); $12,000 annual contract minimum	Fixed annual credit packages; allowance set on your order form
Warehouse compute	Not included; dbt runs on your warehouse	Not included; every transformation runs on your warehouse
Destinations	Warehouses, lakes, RDBMS and others	Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery
Transformation	dbt, now part of the same company since June 2026	Visual canvas, SQL and Python, plus Maia agents
Deployment	Managed cloud; Hybrid Deployment on Enterprise and Business Critical	Full SaaS, or hybrid runner in your cloud on the Scale plan
Streaming CDC	Log-based CDC (HVR)	Scale plan only; billed for every hour the stream runs
Free trial	14 days, plus Free plan	14 days with 500 credits; no free plan
Security and compliance	SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA BAA, PCI DSS Level 1, HITRUST	ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, HIPAA BAA, PCI DSS 4.0.1
Open source	No	No

About Fivetran

Fivetran is a managed ELT service founded in 2012. It grew through acquisitions: HVR and Teleport Data in 2021, then Census and Tobiko Data in 2025. On June 1, 2026 it completed an all-stock merger with dbt Labs, and the combined company operates as Fivetran + dbt Labs.

About Matillion

Matillion is a cloud data integration platform founded in 2011 that runs transformations as SQL inside your own warehouse. Its Data Productivity Cloud has been renamed Maia, made up of Maia Foundation (the pipeline execution layer), Maia Team (AI agents that build and fix pipelines) and a Context Engine. The older Matillion ETL product is being retired, with version 1.78 LTS reaching end of support in November 2026.

Pricing: rows per connection vs. credits per task hour

Both tools charge on consumption, but they meter different things, so the same workload can be cheap on one and expensive on the other.

Fivetran bills on Monthly Active Rows, and three rule changes in two years have pushed bills up:

March 2025: MAR moved from account-level to per-connection billing, removing account-wide volume discounts.
January 2026: Deletes and history-mode changes now count toward paid MAR.
January 2026: Every standard connection moving 1 to 1M MAR carries a $5 monthly minimum.

High-churn tables, backfills and seasonal spikes all raise MAR, so the bill moves with your data.

Matillion bills in credits, consumed per task hour in two-second increments. An orchestration pipeline uses 1 credit per task hour, a transformation pipeline 3, and a CDC stream 1 or 2. Extra developer users cost 70 credits each per month. Matillion does not publish a price per credit; third-party listings cite about $2.00.

Two things catch Matillion buyers out. Streaming CDC bills the clock, not the data: a premium stream runs about 720 hours a month, roughly 1,440 credits, whether one row changes or a billion. And because transformations run on your warehouse, the Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift or Databricks compute is a second bill on top of your Matillion contract.

In short, Fivetran gets expensive with high row churn across many connections. Matillion gets expensive with heavy transformation, always-on CDC and the warehouse compute behind it.

Connectors: breadth vs. build-your-own

Fivetran lists 700+ connectors, roughly four times Matillion's 150+ pre-built set. If your sources are mainstream SaaS apps and databases, Fivetran is more likely to have them out of the box.

When a source is missing, the two diverge. Fivetran offers a "By Request" program, prioritized by demand with a 2–8 week initial review, or a Python Connector SDK you write and maintain yourself. Matillion lets you build a custom connector in its no-code Designer, which is faster for REST APIs but adds pipelines you own.

Destinations differ too. Fivetran loads to warehouses, lakes and databases. Matillion runs only on Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery, because it needs a warehouse to execute its transformations.

Transformation: dbt inside the vendor vs. Matillion's own canvas

This is where the tools differ most. Fivetran moves data; transformation now comes from dbt, which merged into Fivetran in June 2026. dbt was a neutral layer that worked with any ingestion tool; it is now part of the same vendor as your ingestion.

Matillion is built around transformation. Teams design pipelines on a visual canvas, drop into SQL or Python where needed, and push the work down to the warehouse. Maia agents can now plan, build and troubleshoot pipelines from natural-language prompts. Note that transformation pipelines cost three times as many credits per hour as orchestration pipelines.

Deployment and data residency

Fivetran is managed cloud first. Its Hybrid Deployment, where data is processed in your environment, is limited to Enterprise and Business Critical plans and a subset of connectors.

Matillion separates a Matillion-hosted control plane from a data plane runner. You can run it as full SaaS, or put the runner in your own AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or Snowflake account, but hybrid deployment, custom SSO and streaming CDC all sit on the top Scale plan.

Neither tool can be fully self-hosted or run on-prem.

Where each one leads

Fivetran leads on connector breadth, low-maintenance managed syncs, and compliance attestations, including PCI DSS Level 1 and HITRUST on its Business Critical plan.

Matillion leads on in-warehouse transformation for mixed-skill teams, free validation and sampling while building, and migration tooling for legacy ETL from Informatica, Talend and similar platforms.

When to choose Fivetran, Matillion or Airbyte

Your situation	Better fit
You need hundreds of SaaS sources synced with minimal setup	Fivetran
You require PCI DSS Level 1 or HITRUST attestation in a fully managed service	Fivetran
Your team builds complex transformations visually on Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift or BigQuery	Matillion
You are migrating legacy Informatica or Talend jobs to a cloud warehouse	Matillion
Your bill is driven by high-churn tables, deletes or many small connections	Airbyte (capacity-based)
You run always-on CDC and don't want to pay for every hour a stream is idle	Airbyte
You must self-host or keep data fully on-prem	Airbyte
You want ingestion and transformation from different vendors, with dbt kept neutral	Airbyte
You need a missing connector this week, without a request queue	Airbyte (Connector Builder)

Where Airbyte fits

Fivetran and Matillion both ask you to accept consumption pricing you can't fully predict, and both keep the code closed. Airbyte is the open alternative for the ingestion layer.

Pricing that doesn't track rows or task hours. Pro and Enterprise Flex price on Data Workers, dedicated compute capacity, so volume spikes and long-running syncs don't change the bill. Smaller teams can start on Standard ($20/month) with no annual minimum, or self-host Core for free.
700+ connectors, plus a fast path for the rest. The Connector Builder generates a connector from API docs with AI assist, and the low-code and Python CDKs cover anything custom. Because the code is open, you can fix or extend any connector yourself.
Run it anywhere. Self-hosted, managed cloud, hybrid, or fully on-prem with Enterprise Flex, all on one codebase.
Your choice of transformation. Airbyte integrates natively with dbt Core, dbt Cloud, Airflow, Dagster and Prefect. Teams that like Matillion's canvas can keep it for transformation and use Airbyte for ingestion.

Build with Airbyte

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FAQs

What is the main difference between Fivetran and Matillion?

Fivetran is a managed ingestion service with 700+ connectors that bills on Monthly Active Rows. Matillion is a low-code pipeline builder that transforms data inside your warehouse and bills in credits per task hour.

Is Matillion cheaper than Fivetran?

It depends on the workload. Fivetran costs rise with row churn and connection count; Matillion costs rise with transformation hours, always-on CDC and the warehouse compute it triggers. Neither publishes a full price list, so model your own pipelines before comparing quotes.

Can you use Fivetran and Matillion together?

Yes. Some teams load with Fivetran and transform with Matillion. Since the dbt merger, Fivetran increasingly bundles its own transformation, so check for overlap and double paying.

Does Matillion support dbt?

Yes. Matillion can run dbt alongside its own SQL and Python transformations. Its main approach is still its visual canvas and Maia agents.

What is Matillion Maia?

Maia is Matillion's current platform name. Maia Foundation runs pipelines, Maia Team provides AI agents that build and troubleshoot them, and the Context Engine tracks schemas and lineage.

Does Fivetran own dbt now?

Fivetran and dbt Labs completed an all-stock merger on June 1, 2026 and operate as Fivetran + dbt Labs.

Can I self-host Fivetran or Matillion?

Not fully. Fivetran offers Hybrid Deployment on Enterprise and Business Critical plans. Matillion lets you run its runner in your cloud on the Scale plan, but the control plane stays Matillion-hosted. Airbyte Core is free to self-host, and Enterprise Flex runs fully on-prem.

What is a good alternative to Fivetran and Matillion?

Airbyte offers 700+ connectors, capacity-based pricing, open-source code and self-hosted, hybrid or on-prem deployment, and works with dbt, Airflow and Dagster.

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