Chen Cuello
JAN 22, 2024
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5 min read
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Everyone in the data integration industry knows that data transformation tools are extremely important. In essence, these tools work toward simplifying the data integration procedure to deliver efficient results used for different data transformation processes.

Changing your data format can be easily done if you know what to look for in particular software. This article will discuss 10 of the top data transformation tools currently trending on the market. All of the entries on our list are at the top of their game, offering the most bang for your buck.

What Are Data Transformation Tools?

Generally speaking, data transformation tools are software tools that accelerate and automate the data transformation process – making it happen in minutes rather than hours. In fact, the method of transforming data is a crucial and paramount step in the data integration process.

A top-shelf data transformation tool should be able to deliver cleansing, modification, and enrichment of data with no data loss whatsoever.

Business Benefits of Data Transformation Tools

There are many tools for data transformation you could use, but from a basic standpoint, all of them should serve one main purpose: to process raw data for further analysis. In essence, data transformation allows businesses to use raw data, whether structured or unstructured, and transform it for seamless processing, including data integration, analysis, and visualization.

Every existing team within a company’s hierarchy could benefit from data transformation, mainly because poorly structured data can pose a negative effect on all major business procedures. 

All in all, some of the most vital business benefits of data transformation tools include the following:

  • Boosted application compatibility
  • Faster data processing
  • Enhanced data management and data organization
  • Narrowed margins for error
  • Better quality of data

Best Data Transformation Tools on the Market

Today, you can find plenty of data transformation tools designed for data manipulation, but not all of them are a good fit for your business. You need to look for a particular software that fits your business plan and can help you reach your end goal.

We’ve done the research and hard work to help guide you on the top data transformation tools for 2024, so you can find the most versatile, efficient, and affordable tool for your business.

Rivery

Rivery is one of the top tools for data transformation that is a fully-managed DataOps platform. It works for all organizational data and can seamlessly automate, manage, and transform data models. 

The SaaS platform delivers a streamlined solution for workflow orchestration, ELT pipelines, and different DataOps. If you want a scalable data stack for your business, Rivery is it —use it for unified data ingestion, SQL and Python transformations, data transformation, data orchestration, and  workflow automation

Moreover, Rivery comes with more than 200 native connectors so data engineers can easily connect to databases, file storage, apps, and data warehouses. BigQuery, Redshift, Shopify, Snowflake, Amazon S3, Firebolt, Databricks, Salesforce, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Rest API are only some of the sources you can use. 

One of the many reasons why data pros love working with Rivery is that, no matter how complex data extraction might be, Rivery’s native Python support makes it super easy to transform data from any system. Plus, with the option of change data capture replication, you won’t waste any time. You can rely on a fast and dependable data replication from a preferred database to a designated data warehouse. 

  • Best for data analysts and data scientists
  • Pricing: 3 pricing tiers—Starter, Professional, Enterprise
ProsCons
  • Ever-growing list of connectors
  • Simple to use and flexible
  • Free/freemium version
  • No setup fee
  • Orchestrate your entire workflow with a user-friendly interface to build dependencies
  • Adequate knowledge needed to understand error prompts

Qlik

Qlik has been part of the business analysis field since 1993. Today, it’s one of the major software firms offering different data solutions to pave a bridge between data, insights, and action. 

Qlik offers a single cloud platform for active intelligence. If you’re looking for a data solution that can help accelerate and streamline the data warehouse design, Qlik will do a great job. Moreover, it enables you to develop, test, deploy, and update everything data-related. 

The main purpose of Qlik is to lessen the time needed for data analytics by facilitating the creation of data warehouses, data management, and ETL processes.

  • Best for data engineers and data analysts
  • Pricing: Depends on requirements (contact sales for more information)

 

ProsCons
  • Great multiple source and target integrations 
  • No-code ETL automation
  • User-centered interface
  • Paid service

Matillion

Another one of the top data transformation tools is Matillion, a company founded in 2011. Matilion started offering business analytics as a service and continued perfecting its offers by providing software solutions to ease ETL processes.

In general, Matillion enters the data transformation space with its two main products: Matillion ETL and Matillion Data Loader. Both are fantastic data transformation tools that help data engineers migrate and load large data into a cloud warehouse of preference. 

  • Best for data analysts and data engineers
  • Pricing: Matillion Data Loader is free, whereas Matillion ETL works with credits as its pricing model (Basic, Advanced, Enterprise).
ProsCons
  • Great support of popular data sources and data destinations
  • The learning curve is reasonable
  • No-code ETL automation
  • Inferior Git integration

dbt Labs

dbt Labs is the company behind dbt, which has quickly turned into the standard for data transformation for analytic and data engineers.

As one of the trending tools for data transformation, dbt Labs allows analytics engineers to manipulate data and transform it right in their warehouses by resorting to writing nothing more than SQL statements. By using dbt, data engineers can generate reliable, clean data to support operational workflows, ML modeling, and reporting.

Dbt allows for fast analytics code and generating data pipelines from start to finish. 

  • Best for data engineers and analytics engineers
  • Pricing: Developer, Team, Enterprise
ProsCons
  • Data transformation in real time 
  • Flawless individual transformation support 
  • Very intuitive transformations
  • Not for non-technical users—SQL knowledge is a must

Trifacta

Another of the best data transformation tools we included in our list is Trifacta, an easy to use, visual data engineering and data wrangling cloud platform. Trifacta is perfect for data teams to prep, clean, transform, and visualize raw data. In addition, data engineers can also rely on Trtifacta’s options to automate data pipelines and create reports.

With this tool, analysts can collaborate with data engineers and data scientists to simplify different data operations. One of the major perks of Trifacta is the option to connect to any data source fast and evaluate, verify, and speed up data transformation processes.

  • Best for data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers
  • Pricing: Starts at $80 per user per month; 30-day free trial
ProsCons
  • Great lakehouse connection
  • Amazing GitHub stars and GitHub forks
  • Easy-to-use UI
  • Free version is restricted to 100MB files

Talend

Launched in 2005, Talend is the leader in open-source integration application. You can rely on Talend to integrate big data and do seamless cloud computing and ETL operations with over 900 connectors.

Data engineers that use Talend can perform ETL and data integration super fast. Talend is open-source software that’s great for data planning, data integration, processing, and data storage in the cloud. This tool can help data teams fasten their data movement from a designated location in real time.

  • Best for data engineers
  • Pricing: 4 tiers (Stitch, Data Management Platform, Big Data Platform, Data Fabric), starting at $1,170 a month or $12,000 per year 
ProsCons
  • Open-source, scalable, and performance-driven data warehouse
  • Specialized ETL data extractions
  • Lower error rates
  • No free version

Hevo Data

Hevo Data is a no-code data pipeline that helps data scientists replicate data from any data source with practically no maintenance. A major perk of Hevo Data is its free trial option, valid for 14 days. During this period, you can move data from more than 150 ready-to-use integrations, including many databases and SaaS.

The best features of Hevo Data include simplifying ETL, ELT, and reverse ETL data pipelines. You can either drag and drop pre-fabricated transformation blocks in the dashboard or write Python scripts to launch data transformations.

  • Best for data scientists and data engineers
  • Pricing: Free plan is available, and a 14-day free trial for all the paid plans (beginning at $299.00 per month)
ProsCons
  • Super user-centered
  • Seamless operations
  • Perfect for replicating data from several different sources
  • Calls for some manual mapping

Datameer

Another of the best data transformation tools for 2024 is Datameer. The software delivers great data modeling and data transformation toolsets that even technical laymen can use. The tool streamlines the analytic engineering processes and speeds up the generation and delivery of datasets, which will be used in machine learning, reporting, and analytics.

By using Datameer, business teams that aren’t knowledgeable in SQL can generate their own databases within Snowflake and use a no-code visual interface. Data engineers will find Datameer especially useful when reviewing or optimizing databases for modeling or transformation purposes.

  • Best for non-coding data analysts 
  • Pricing: Individual plans begin at $100
ProsCons
  • Intuitive complex and multi-stage transformations
  • Code and no-code data transformation
  • Great data integration and visualization features
  • Limited to Snowflake

Informatica

Here is a tool that’s perfect for extracting, transforming, and loading data into a data warehouse without breaking a sweat. Informatica is best used in enterprises looking to navigate across different databases in real-time.

You can transform any type of data format and size into clean, usable data in no time. Informatica allows data teams to map the transformation they need once and then simply deploy the command whenever needed without writing code. Informatica supports SWIFT, HIPPA, ACORD, and more industry-approved formats.

If you decide to give Informatica a go, you’ll get two options to choose from: Power Center, which is an ETL platform for large enterprises, and Cloud Data Integration, which is great as an IPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service).

  • Best for data engineers at large enterprises
  • Pricing: The basic plan starts at $2,000 a month
ProsCons
  • Perfect for large data requirements
  • Seamless scaling
  • Pre-built libraries of prevalent transformations
  • Transformations are built around XML 

Keboola

Keboola is a data transformation software used to automate pretty much all data operations. It delivers a full data sack as a service, and everything is nicely connected so data engineers can easily track every process.

Keboola offers end-to-end solutions, ETL, metadata management, web services, and more, all from one place. The software comes with more than 250 pre-built integration solutions, so you can easily find a suitable source and destination for seamless data integration. 

  • Best for data engineers and data scientists
  • Pricing: A Free tier and an Enterprise tier.
ProsCons
  • Availability of scaling the backend
  • Low-code transformations in SQL, Python, R, and Julia
  • No-code transformations and customizable data pipelines
  • Datatypes in storage can seem complex when onboarding the tool

Factors to Consider While Choosing Data Transformation Tools

When it comes to which data transformation software will suit your business needs best, you can get to the answer in no time if you know what to look for. For instance, the following 5 questions can help you land the best decision for your specific needs:

  • What makes your data source?
  • What’s the destination you’re aiming to move your data to?
  • What kind of data transformation do you need to conduct? 
  • What kind of professional support are you looking to get?
  • How much are you willing to spend? 

When you answer these questions, you’ll get closer to better understanding your business needs and choose one of the best data transformation tools. 

How Can Rivery Help?

When it comes to manipulating data, there are many data transformation options to choose from. However, with such a saturated market, missing out on the best option is easy. Luckily, Rivery is here to help!

As one of the best data transformation tools, Rivery can help you make your data flow without breaking a sweat. There is no need for manual coding to build complex end-to-end ETL pipelines and streamline your overall data transformation process. Moreover, Rivery can integrate with any data source and accelerate data delivery.

Book a demo today and see this tool in action!

Minimize the firefighting.
Maximize ROI on pipelines.

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