If you want to self-host and control costs, look at Airbyte (free self-managed Core, source-available under ELv2). If your team writes Python and needs custom connectors, dlt (Apache 2.0) or Meltano (MIT). If you want another managed service with published prices, Hevo Data (billed by events) or Estuary (billed by data volume and connectors, with a focus on real-time CDC). If you want low-code pipelines that also transform data, Matillion; for integration plus data quality from one vendor, Qlik Talend Cloud. If everything lives in one cloud, try its own service first: AWS Glue, Fabric Data Factory or Google Cloud Datastream. Do not start new projects on Stitch, which now directs new users to Qlik Talend Cloud.
Fivetran is a managed ELT service: it extracts data from SaaS applications, databases and files and loads it into a warehouse or lake, with SaaS and Hybrid Deployment options and a Connector SDK for custom sources. It bills by Monthly Active Rows (MAR), the distinct rows inserted or updated in a month, counted by primary key. Its Free plan includes 500,000 MAR a month, and paid plans are Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical. Fivetran and dbt Labs completed an all-stock merger on 1 June 2026 and operate as "Fivetran + dbt Labs".
Teams look elsewhere for a few recurring reasons. The first two come from Fivetran's own documentation; the others are our editorial reading, not survey data.
- MAR-based costs and the 2025 pricing change. From 1 March 2025 Fivetran applies its volume tiers per connection rather than across the account. Fivetran's FAQ says customers with many similar-sized connections will pay more and those with one dominant connection less, and that the Starter and Private Deployment plans are no longer available. Its documentation also lists a USD 5 base charge for each standard connection with between 1 and 1 million MAR on paid plans. Teams with many small connections or high-churn tables find bills hard to forecast.
- Open source and self-hosting. Fivetran is proprietary. Hybrid Deployment keeps data processing in your network, but the control plane remains Fivetran's cloud. Teams with strict data residency rules, or who simply want to run the software themselves, look at self-managed tools (editorial).
- Custom connectors. Fivetran offers a Connector SDK, but teams with many internal APIs often prefer writing loaders in a general-purpose framework they already run (editorial).
- Consolidation. With dbt now part of the same company, some buyers want to avoid depending on one vendor for both ingestion and transformation (editorial).
For head-to-head pages, see Airbyte vs Fivetran, Fivetran vs Hevo Data, Fivetran vs Matillion, Fivetran vs Talend and Fivetran vs Stitch. If you are choosing an ingestion tool for the first time, start with the best ETL tools.
Quick picks
Free self-managed Core edition with a large connector catalogue; source-available under ELv2.
An Apache 2.0 library: write a Python function, and dlt handles schema, normalisation and incremental loads.
Streaming change data capture, billed by data volume and connector instances, with a free Developer plan.
No-code managed pipelines with published plan prices and a free plan of 1 million events a month.
Serverless ETL billed per second, plus zero-ETL integrations with no extra integration fee.
How we chose
We considered Airbyte, Hevo Data, Stitch, Estuary, Meltano, dlt, Matillion, Qlik Talend Cloud, Informatica, AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory and Fabric Data Factory, and Google Cloud Datastream. To be included, a product had to load data from databases or SaaS applications into a warehouse or lake, be sold or actively developed in October 2026, and publish its pricing model or licence on an official page. Informatica is covered in the best ETL tools guide instead: it is an enterprise data management suite rather than a like-for-like replacement for a connector service.
Stitch is not listed as an entry. Stitch, owned by Qlik since the Talend acquisition, now says it "is now part of Qlik", encourages new users to try Qlik Talend Cloud, and its trial opens Qlik Talend Cloud. Plans are still listed for existing customers and we found no end-of-life date, but it is not a sensible destination for a new migration away from Fivetran.
For each product we recorded its type, pricing model, licence, hosting options, free plan or trial, and main trade-off. Where a price is quoted it is one dated example from the vendor's own page. The order is not a ranking: entries run from managed services, through self-hosted and code-first tools, to enterprise suites and cloud-native services.
At a glance
| Tool | Type | Pricing model | Open source | Hosting | Best for | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbyte | Ingestion platform | Free self-managed; cloud credits or capacity | Source-available (ELv2) | Self-managed, cloud or in your own boundary | Self-hosting and many connectors | You operate it on Core |
| Hevo Data | Managed ELT | Events per month; Free plan | No | SaaS | Simple managed pipelines | No self-hosted option |
| Estuary | Managed CDC and ELT | Per GB moved plus per connector instance | Source-available core (BSL) | SaaS; private deployment on Enterprise | Real-time CDC and streaming | Per-connector fee adds up with many sources |
| Meltano | Ingestion framework (CLI) | Free; paid hosting and support | Yes (MIT) | Self-hosted or managed | Pipelines as code | Engineering effort |
| dlt | Python ingestion library | Free library; paid dltHub platform | Yes (Apache 2.0) | Anywhere Python runs | Custom APIs and internal sources | You write and run the code |
| Matillion Maia Foundation | Low-code ELT | Credits for task hours and users | No | SaaS; hybrid agents on Scale | Ingestion plus transformation in one tool | No public starting price |
| Qlik Talend Cloud | Enterprise suite | Capacity by volume, job runs and duration | No (open edition retired) | SaaS or client-managed | Integration plus data quality | No public prices |
| AWS Glue | Cloud-native ETL | DPU-hours billed per second | No | AWS only | AWS-centred stacks | Code-heavy; AWS only |
| Fabric Data Factory and Azure Data Factory | Cloud-native ETL | Fabric capacity; ADF pay as you go | No | Microsoft cloud; on-premises via gateway | Microsoft and Power BI shops | Some ADF features not yet in Fabric |
| Google Cloud Datastream | Cloud-native CDC | Usage-based (see Google pricing) | No | Google Cloud | Database replication into BigQuery | Few SaaS sources |
Airbyte
Airbyte is the closest like-for-like alternative: a connector platform for databases, APIs and files into warehouses and lakes, with a connector builder for new sources. The difference from Fivetran is that you can run it yourself. Airbyte Core, the self-managed edition, is free. Airbyte's licence page states that its connectors and public repositories, except the MIT-licensed Airbyte Protocol, are under the Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2), a source-available licence that allows commercial internal use but not offering Airbyte to others as a managed service.
For the hosted service, Standard and Plus are priced by credits based on data volume, while Pro and Enterprise Flex are priced by capacity in "Data Workers", which Airbyte presents as a way to avoid bills that follow volume spikes; Enterprise Flex runs inside your own boundary. As listed on Airbyte's pricing page on 7 October 2026, Standard starts at USD 20 a month, and paid plans have a 14-day trial. See Airbyte vs Fivetran.
- On Core you are responsible for hosting, scaling, upgrades and monitoring.
- ELv2 is not an OSI open source licence and restricts reselling Airbyte as a service.
- Capacity-based plans are priced by quote.
Hevo Data
Hevo Data is a managed, no-code pipeline service, so it suits teams who like Fivetran's hands-off model but want a different pricing basis. Hevo bills by events: each record inserted, updated or deleted in the destination counts as one event. The Free plan covers up to 1 million events a month with limited connectors and up to five users. As listed on Hevo's pricing page on 7 October 2026, Starter begins at USD 265 a month billed annually (USD 299 monthly), followed by Professional and a custom-priced Business Critical tier, with a 14-day trial.
Starter includes dbt integration and SSH/SSL connections. See Fivetran vs Hevo Data and Airbyte vs Hevo Data.
- Cloud only, so it does not answer self-hosting or data residency concerns.
- Event volume tiers mean costs still follow data change rates.
- SSO, RBAC and streaming pipelines are in the custom-priced tier.
Estuary
Estuary, whose platform repository is published as Estuary Flow, is a managed platform for real-time CDC and batch pipelines. Its pricing has two parts: data moved and connector instances. As listed on Estuary's pricing page on 7 October 2026, the Cloud plan is USD 0.50 per GB plus USD 100 a month for each of the first six connector instances (USD 50 for each additional one), with a 30-day trial. Estuary says data captured once is billed once even when delivered to several destinations. The free Developer plan allows 10 GB a month and two connector instances.
The Enterprise plan adds SSO, compliance features and private deployments in your own environment. The main repository is published under the Business Source License, with some components under Apache 2.0, so it is source-available rather than fully open source.
- The per-connector monthly fee becomes significant with many small sources.
- Private deployment is limited to the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
- The core is under the Business Source License, not an OSI open source licence.
Meltano
Meltano is an MIT-licensed, declarative, code-first data integration engine run from the command line, with pipelines defined in project files under version control. Its site describes it as "an open source project by Matatika", which also offers managed hosting and paid support.
Compared with Fivetran, there is no per-row fee for the software; the costs are your infrastructure and engineering time. It suits teams that already run an orchestrator and want ingestion reviewed like application code. See Airbyte vs Meltano.
- No point-and-click UI comparable to Fivetran's; setup is configuration and CLI work.
- Connector maintenance quality varies, so test each extractor you rely on (editorial).
- You provide scheduling, monitoring and alerting unless you buy hosting.
dlt
dlt (data load tool) is an Apache 2.0 Python library. You write a function that yields records, and dlt infers and evolves the schema, normalises nested JSON, tracks incremental state and loads into the destination. It needs no server, so pipelines can run in an existing orchestrator such as Airflow, Dagster or Prefect, a serverless function or a scheduled job.
It is the most direct answer to "Fivetran does not have a connector for our system": instead of a vendor SDK, the connector is ordinary Python your team owns. dltHub sells a managed platform with a runtime, observability and data quality checks.
- Every source is code you write, test and maintain.
- No managed SaaS connector catalogue of the kind Fivetran offers.
- dltHub platform pricing was not clearly published when checked.
Matillion Maia Foundation
Matillion's Maia Foundation (formerly the Data Productivity Cloud) combines connectors with a low-code pipeline canvas that also supports SQL and Python, plus built-in Git and Maia, which Matillion calls its agentic data workforce. That makes it a fit for teams who use Fivetran for loading and another tool for transformation, and want one product instead.
Plans are Developer, Teams and Scale. Credits are consumed by task hours (pipeline execution time) and by developer users beyond those included, which is a different basis from Fivetran's row counts. Scale adds hybrid deployment with self-hosted agents and streaming CDC. See Fivetran vs Matillion.
- No public starting price on the pricing page.
- Hybrid deployment and streaming CDC require the Scale plan.
- Proprietary pipeline definitions are harder to migrate than plain SQL or Python (editorial).
Qlik Talend Cloud
Qlik Talend Cloud is Qlik's data integration platform, built from its acquisitions of Talend and, through Talend, Stitch. It is sold in Starter, Standard, Premium and Enterprise editions; Qlik says usage combines data volume moved, number of job executions and execution duration, and no prices are published. A client-managed deployment is also available.
It is the route Qlik offers existing Stitch customers, and it covers data quality and transformation that Fivetran leaves to other tools. The former free Talend Open Studio was retired on 31 January 2024. See Fivetran vs Talend.
- No public pricing.
- No free open source edition any more.
- A broader suite than many teams replacing a connector service need (editorial).
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service with ETL jobs, crawlers and the Glue Data Catalog. Jobs are billed per second in Data Processing Unit hours; AWS listed USD 0.44 per DPU-hour on its pricing page on 7 October 2026, and rates vary by region. Billing follows compute time rather than rows changed, which is a different cost profile from MAR.
For supported database-to-warehouse pairs, AWS zero-ETL integrations replicate data without pipelines; AWS states there is no additional fee for zero-ETL beyond the source and target resources used.
- AWS only.
- Glue jobs are Spark or Python code, which is more work than configuring a managed connector.
- Coverage of third-party SaaS sources is narrower than a dedicated ELT service (editorial).
Fabric Data Factory and Azure Data Factory
Microsoft calls Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric "the next generation of Azure Data Factory". It includes copy jobs for bulk, incremental and CDC copies, mirroring of operational databases into OneLake, pipelines and Dataflow Gen2, billed through Fabric capacity. Azure Data Factory remains available pay as you go, billed per activity run, data movement hours and data flow vCore-hours, with a self-hosted integration runtime for on-premises sources.
For teams already paying for Fabric capacity, replacing Fivetran connections to Microsoft and common database sources with copy jobs or mirroring may remove a separate bill. Microsoft lists Azure-SSIS integration runtimes and managed virtual networks as not yet available in Fabric.
- SaaS connector coverage differs from Fivetran's, so check each source in Microsoft's connector list.
- Fabric capacity is shared with other workloads.
- Strongest when the destination is Fabric or Azure.
Google Cloud Datastream
Datastream is Google Cloud's serverless change data capture and replication service. It reads from MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL (including AlloyDB), SQL Server, MongoDB and Spanner, and from some applications such as Salesforce, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Microsoft Dataverse and ServiceNow, and writes to BigQuery, Cloud Storage or Apache Iceberg tables.
If most of your Fivetran usage is database replication into BigQuery, Datastream covers that inside your Google Cloud bill. Check current rates on Google's Datastream pricing page.
- Only a handful of SaaS sources, so marketing and finance apps need another tool.
- Destinations are Google Cloud services.
- Transformations need BigQuery SQL, Dataflow or dbt.
When to stay with Fivetran
Stay with Fivetran if the main issue is cost and you have not yet looked at where MAR comes from: Fivetran's documentation explains which re-syncs are free and lets you track usage per connection, and excluding unused tables or columns often changes the bill without a migration. Fivetran also remains the option on this page that combines a large managed connector catalogue, Hybrid Deployment and, since the dbt merger, a transformation product from the same company.
Switching makes most sense when a specific constraint applies: you must self-host (Airbyte, Meltano, dlt), your sources are custom APIs (dlt), you need real-time CDC priced by volume (Estuary), you want transformation in the same tool (Matillion, Qlik Talend Cloud), or everything lives in one cloud (AWS Glue, Fabric Data Factory, Datastream). Many teams move only some connections, keeping Fivetran for SaaS sources and using a cheaper route for large database replication. Run both side by side for a month and compare row counts before cutting over.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest alternative to Fivetran?
It depends on your sources and change volumes, not list prices. Self-managed tools (Airbyte Core, Meltano, dlt) have no licence fee but need infrastructure and engineering time. Among managed services, compare Hevo Data (events), Estuary (GB plus connectors) and Airbyte Cloud (credits) using your own volumes.
Is there an open source alternative to Fivetran?
Yes. dlt (Apache 2.0) and Meltano (MIT) are open source. Airbyte Core is free to self-host but is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0, which is not an OSI open source licence.
Why did my Fivetran bill change in 2025?
From 1 March 2025 Fivetran applies volume tiers per connection rather than across the account. Fivetran says accounts with many similar-sized connections pay more and those with one dominant connection pay less. Its documentation also lists a USD 5 base charge per standard connection with 1 to 1 million MAR on paid plans.
Is Stitch a good Fivetran alternative?
Not for new projects. Stitch is now part of Qlik and its site directs new users to Qlik Talend Cloud, although existing customers can still log in. See Fivetran vs Stitch.
Did Fivetran merge with dbt Labs?
Yes. The all-stock merger was announced on 13 October 2025 and completed on 1 June 2026; the company operates as Fivetran + dbt Labs, and dbt Core remains open source under Apache 2.0.
Can Airflow replace Fivetran?
Not by itself. Airflow schedules and monitors tasks but does not ship managed connectors; you would combine it with a loader such as dlt or Airbyte. See Apache Airflow vs Fivetran.
Sources
- Fivetran pricing
- Fivetran usage-based pricing documentation
- Fivetran 2025 pricing updates FAQ
- Fivetran deployment models
- Fivetran and dbt Labs complete merger (press release)
- Airbyte pricing
- Airbyte licences
- Hevo Data pricing
- Estuary pricing
- Estuary Flow repository and licences
- Meltano repository (MIT)
- Meltano
- dlt by dltHub
- Matillion pricing
- Qlik Talend Cloud pricing
- Talend Open Studio retirement (Qlik)
- Stitch (now part of Qlik)
- AWS Glue pricing
- Fabric Data Factory vs Azure Data Factory
- Azure Data Factory pricing
- Google Cloud Datastream overview
Checked October 2026.
How we research these guides: our editorial method.