All ETL tool comparison

Fivetran vs. Matillion

Fivetran and Matillion are two competing ELT solutions. Compare data sources and destinations, features, pricing and more. Understand their differences and pros / cons.

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Fivetran
Fivetran
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Matillion
Matillion
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Fivetran

About the services

About Fivetran

Fivetran, founded in 2012, has quickly established itself as a reliable data integration choice. The company's mission is to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity. Fivetran specializes in zero-maintenance pipelines and automated connectors, focusing on reducing the complexity of data integration for modern data teams. As of the date of publishing this article, Fivetran offers 250+ connectors.

About Matillion

Matillion, established in 2011, with a vision centers on making the world's data useful through accessible and powerful data transformation. Their platform caters to data engineers who need robust transformation capabilities alongside efficient data loading. As of the date of publishing this article, Matillion offers 150+ connectors.

Features

Focus

Data ingestion, ELT.

Data ingestion, data transformation, and business intelligence.

Sources

More than 150.

More than 100.

Destinations

All major data warehouses, lakes and databases.

All major data warehouses, lakes and databases.

Customizability of connectors

Limited through Fivetran’s Cloud functions.

No.

Database replication

Full table and incremental via change data capture.

Pricing is indexed on rows.

Full table and incremental via SELECT/replication key, timestamp or change data capture for AWS-hosted Matillion ETL instances.

Integration with data stack

Supports dbt transformations.

No.

Support SLAs

Available

Available

Security certifications

HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2

GDPR

Vendor lock-in

Annual contracts.

Annual contracts. Self-hosting implies a higher lock-in.

Purchase process

Requires conversations with sales.

Sales only.

Pricing

Volume-based pricing with MARs (monthly active rows). Credits are not rolled over.

Based on the number of Virtual Core Hours used. 

API

Available through Powered by Fivetran.

No.

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Connectors

Pre-built connectors are the primary way to differentiate ETL / ELT solutions, as they enable data teams to focus only on the insights to build.

Fivetran

Fivetran supports over 200 data sources as of when we wrote this article. These connectors cover a broad spectrum of applications, databases, file storage systems, and APIs. However, Fivetran doesn’t support any data lakes.

Matillion

Matillion, while offering fewer pre-built connectors than Fivetran, still provides a substantial number, with over 150 connectors available. It supports various source systems including databases (e.g., Oracle, SQL Server), SaaS applications (e.g., Salesforce, Marketo), and file formats. Matillion only supports Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Delta Lake as destinations.

Performance & Scalability

Fivetran

Fivetran is designed with scalability at its core, utilizing a serverless architecture that automatically scales resources based on data volume and complexity. It can handle large datasets efficiently, with the ability to process billions of rows daily. Fivetran's approach to incremental updates minimizes data transfer and processing time, only syncing changed data after the initial load. This method ensures high performance even as data volumes grow. 

Matillion

Matillion leverages the scalability of cloud data warehouses, running transformations directly within these platforms to take advantage of their processing power. This approach allows Matillion to handle very large datasets by pushing down computations to the data warehouse layer. The tool offers features like dynamic scaling of compute resources and parallel job execution to enhance performance.

Transformation

Fivetran

Fivetran is an ELT tool, and does not transform data prior to loading, either. It offers its own opinionated normalization out of the box, and recently added support for post-load transformations via copy-and-paste SQL and dbt.

Matillion

Matillion offers post-load transformations through what it calls Transformation Components. Users can create Transformation Components via point-and-click selection or by writing them in SQL. Matillion does not support external transformation tools, such as dbt.

Customizability

Every company has custom data architectures and, therefore, unique data integration needs. A lot of tools don’t enable teams to address those, which results in a lot of investment in building and maintaining additional in-house scripts. 

Fivetran

Fivetran released cloud functions to let their customers edit connectors by writing small function to fetch data using Go, Java, Node.js, Python, C# or F#. Customers will need to host their functions on a serverless platform.

Matillion

Matillion doesn’t provide any customizability, unfortunately. 

Support & docs

Data integration tools can be complex, so customers need to have great support channels. This includes online documentation as well as tutorials, email and chat support. More complicated tools may also offer training services.

Fivetran

Fivetran provides support through an in-app form, but does not offer chat support.

Their documentation is comprehensive, but Fivetran doesn’t offer a Slack or Discourse community. 

Fivetran does not provide any training services.

Matillion

Matillion provides support through an online ticketing system accessible through a support portal or via email. 

Documentation relies on articles accessible through the support portal. 

Matillion does not have any Slack or Discourse community to provide help. 

The company doesn't provide training services, but tutorial videos can be found on YouTube.

Pricing

Fivetran

Fivetran provides a 14-day free trial. It discloses a pricing based on monthly active rows, i.e., rows that are added or edited in a given month. 

Fivetran’s volume-based pricing doesn’t adapt well with database replication use cases that involve the replication of millions of rows. 

Matillion

Matillion offers a 14-day free trial. Its pricing depends on the cloud platform on which the customer's data warehouse runs. 

The pricing model is based on Virtual Core Hours, which will depend on the instance size customers run. Annual billing plans are available with discounts.

Fivetran Vs. Matillion: What to Choose?

Choose Fivetran when:

1. You need a wide variety of pre-built connectors with minimal setup.

2. Your focus is primarily on efficient ELT processes with simple transformations.

3. You prefer a fully managed, low-maintenance solution that handles most of the complexity for you.

4. Real-time data syncing is a priority for your use case.

Choose Matillion when:

1. You require complex data transformations and need a visual interface to design them.

2. Your data stack is centered around major cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Synapse).

3. You need a tool that can handle both data integration and advanced analytics workflows.

4. You want more control over the execution environment and transformation processes.

Airbyte is another option worth considering. Here are four reasons why:

1. Open-source flexibility: Airbyte is an open-source platform, allowing for customization and community-driven development. This can be particularly appealing for data engineers who want to modify or extend the tool's capabilities.

2. Broad connector coverage: Like Fivetran, Airbyte offers a wide range of connectors, including some for less common or niche data sources. The open-source nature means new connectors are frequently added by the community.

3. AI Workflow Support: Airbyte now offers features specifically designed for AI use cases, which can be particularly valuable for organizations working with generative AI models and workflows.

4. Python Library Support: An open-source library that packages Airbyte connectors and makes them available in Python, while removing the need for hosted services.

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Don't trust our word, trust theirs!

"Airbyte is a very promising solution for the single point of data integration. We continuously migrate our connectors from our existing solution to Airbyte as they became available on Airbyte, and look forward to the release of Airbyte Cloud!"
Apostol Tegko
Apostol Tegko
Data Analyst at Fnatic
"Airbyte has cut months of man hours off of our ELT pipeline development and delivered usable data to us in hours instead of weeks. We are excited for the future of Airbyte, enthusiastic about their approach, and optimistic about our future together."
Micah Mangione
Micah Mangione
Director of Technology at Cart.com
“I was blown away by how easy it was to get started with Airbyte. We were able to adapt a Singer tap for a missing integration in 25 mins. Because Airbyte is so simple to use, I was able to avoid a planned data engineer hire.​”
Jins Kadwood
Jins Kadwood
CTO at AgriDigital

What our users say

Apostol Tegko
Data Lead
Extensibility to cover all your organization’s needs

Airbyte has become our single point of data integration. We continuously migrate our connectors from our existing solutions to Airbyte as they became available, and extensibly leverage their connector builder on Airbyte Cloud.

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Chase Zieman
Chief Data Officer
Chase Zieman headshot
Reliable infrastructure to power your own product

Airbyte helped us accelerate our progress by years, compared to our competitors. We don’t need to worry about connectors and focus on creating value for our users instead of building infrastructure. That’s priceless. The time and energy saved allows us to disrupt and grow faster.

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Alexis Weill
Data  Lead
Extensibility, scalability and no vendor lock-in

We chose Airbyte for its ease of use, its pricing scalability and its absence of vendor lock-in. Having a lean team makes them our top criteria.
The value of being able to scale and execute at a high level by maximizing resources is immense

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