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.
Focus
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Data ingestion, ELT.
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Data ingestion, data transformation, and business intelligence.
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Sources
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More than 150.
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More than 100.
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Destinations
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All major data warehouses, lakes and databases.
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All major data warehouses, lakes and databases.
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Customizability of connectors
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Limited through Fivetran’s Cloud functions.
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No.
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Database replication
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Full table and incremental via change data capture.
Pricing is indexed on rows.
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Full table and incremental via SELECT/replication key, timestamp or change data capture for AWS-hosted Matillion ETL instances.
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Integration with data stack
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Supports dbt transformations.
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No.
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Support SLAs
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Available
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Available
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Security certifications
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HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2
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GDPR
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Vendor lock-in
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Annual contracts.
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Annual contracts. Self-hosting implies a higher lock-in.
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Purchase process
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Requires conversations with sales.
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Sales only.
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Pricing
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Volume-based pricing with MARs (monthly active rows). Credits are not rolled over.
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Based on the number of Virtual Core Hours used.
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API
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Available through Powered by Fivetran.
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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.
